Day: January 15, 2024

Sara Paule, Crew 289 Journalist & Executive Officer
01.03.2024
Sol 10
Weather makes a big difference and Crew 289 has been remarkably fortunate so far on mission. While it has been below freezing after sundown every day, making morning and evening forays into the further parts of the hab chilly, the sunshine has warmed the days to 30-40°F and resulted in quite comfortable EVAs with appropriate gear. (Ok, it’s typically still chilly riding on the rovers but wandering around warms up an astronaut nicely.) Until now, every day has been practically cloud-free with the exception of one partly cloudy day where we needed to preserve power. Today was genuinely cloudy though and in addition to needing to be cautious regarding power usage, our EVA crew came back quite chilled. Cold and, as ever, hungry but, overall, very happy.
Their destination was White Rock Canyon, a decent clip away southward of the hab. We were uncertain about the presence of the fossils in the location since we were unsuccessful in locating oysters just slightly westward at Barrainca Butte but a close look at the map left us hopeful based on earlier finds along Hab Ridge. Elevation is key to finding oyster deposits and today’s exploratory EVA with Adriana “Rocky” Brown, Eshaana “Butter” Aurora, Riya “Pots” Raj, and Gabe “Terminator” Skowronek was shockingly fruitful. The crew collected over 54 fossils and, best yet, these samples are stunningly clean and well-preserved. You can see the growth plate ridges on the shells! Today’s find more than doubles Rocky’s collection for the mission giving her plenty of materials to work with for her graduate research. We also played with LiDAR and 3D scanning of the fossils to try to document them digitally. We still need to optimize the process, scanning something small versus a geographical feature is not 100% comparable, especially when you want a full scan of the entire shell.
Adi “Michelin” Anibha, Nathan “Shrub” Bitner, and I held down the station today and monitored comms while the EVA crew was out hunting up oysters. Due to the cliffs between us and them, comms were very quiet today. The chatter was missed while we completed research tasks and our cooking.
I tackled breakfast today trying out a new recipe: brown rice and quinoa porridge with coconut milk, brown sugar, and soy sauce. It took well over an hour-and-a-half to cook down into porridge but no one complained. My crew is too kind for that! After shoving food in our faces, I started on bread using instant soup packets brought from Earth as a salt substitute. I finished kneading right as the EVA crew got their comms vests on and dashed downstairs to help them finish suiting up for departure. Everyone had to wait longer on the bread than anyone wanted – it went into the oven right after the return of the EVA team – but everyone was so excited when it finally came out that we hacked into it while still steaming and slathered it in Nutella, peanut butter, butter, and/or strawberries. Fried rice is on the menu for tonight. Can’t wait! It smells gooood.
We are winding down our time now and tomorrow marks our final EVA, assuming weather allows. (We may get rain on Mars!) If we are able to proceed, E.L.F. will be the star of the mission again. In a test today, E.L.F. broke irreparably while completing a practice jump. He reached a vertical height of 1.5” but won’t be doing any more leaping until he can be fixed back up at home. Yet, we’re pleased to hear he is not out of action entirely! Tomorrow we’ll hope to witness his origami moving motion out on the planet’s surface.
Tonight, I expect we’ll likely call it an early night after staying up late last night to finish the movie we started New Year’s Eve. We thought we’d watch another hour of the movie but we got drawn into the cricket match of Lagaan and finished the whole thing instead. Adi had to pause to explain the rules to those of us not familiar with the game. We passed a very enjoyable time in the loft but those of us who did not squeak in a nap today are starting to fade.

Sara Paule, Crew 289 Journalist & Executive Officer
01.02.2024
Sol 9
Here on Sol 9, Crew 289 is beginning to count down the days (and the meals) until departure. Less out of excitement to return to Earth and more to begin the necessary planning to ensure that we can maximally complete our various research projects and coordinate travel arrangements to successfully return ourselves and our equipment. However, today also marks the day where we are beginning to feel the dwindling of our food resources. After tonight, we have 4 more breakfasts and 3 more lunches and dinners here at MDRS. We have plenty of food to keep us fed but, from here on, our kitchen experiments will become that much more experimental. Wish us well!
Breakfast this morning was a choose your own buffet mix of leftovers and cereal with coconut milk. Lunch was a tomato soup cooked by today’s Hab team of CO Adriana “Rocky” Brown, Eshaana “Butter” Aurora (GEO), Riya “Pots” Raj (GHO) and cheesy biscuits. Each was peak inventive with cheesy broccoli soup powder going into the biscuits and soy sauce helping add some salt to the soup and brown sugar some sweetness. Also, apparently biscuit mix also went in to the soup. Ingenious since they needed additional salt and thickener and the biscuit mix had both. Dal makhani – lentils and kidney bean combo – is for dinner.
We did have an EVA today. Electronic LeapFrog (E.L.F.) was the star this afternoon at Candor Chasma, getting a chance to tackle some steeper, rockier, terrain. E.L.F. was able to climb and descend well with a leash assist. Unfortunately, when he prepared to undertake a jump, he lost a wheel so we were not able to measure his standing vertical. (Happily, he’s already been fixed up and will be ready for his third Martian terrain test 2 days from now.) Rarely do we only have one objective during our EVAs and this one was no exception. We were able to collect FLiDAR (drone with a phone) of the chasm and to more thoroughly explore the territory for future EVAs. Before heading back, the team – Aditya “Michelin” Anibha (SCI), Nathan “Shrub” Bitner (ENG), Gabe “Terminator” Skowronek (HSO), and me, Sara “Zinger” Paule (XO) – did take a moment for a group photo. The terrain in the chasm was absolutely beautiful so at one point I entrusted my phone to Shrub today to take photographs while I clicked away with the GoPro (his phone was engaged in the FLiDAR scanning which requires 2 phones, 1 to fly and 1 to scan). I also got some entertaining footage of the drive back to the Hab in the rovers. Shrub declared along the way that thinking of this particular route as comparable to a rollercoaster made it even more fun – it was indeed a delightfully bumpy ride.
So much happens in a day at MDRS and I am only able to give you a taste of the experience. Here is a small sampling of other things that happened today: Rocky checked carbonate levels in some of her collected sediments. Terminator processed a photo of the Crab Nebula (M1). Butter set up a camera for her agrovoltaic minifarm. Pots discovered 11 baby tomatoes in the GreenHab. I finished coding the Journalist reports from prior crews that I selected for sampling a few days ago and also started on coding Sol Summaries, another mandatory report type. And, best yet, for fun this evening, we experimented with “Pots” 3D pen. Her 3D printed piping tip performed admirable in decorating funfetti cupcakes! Beautiful and yummy.

Sara Paule, Crew 289 Journalist & Executive Officer
01.01.2024
Sol 8
Crew 289 got a bit of a later start today after staying up late here on Mars to ring in the new year for humanity. With an EVA planned for noon, that start was not substantially later – more like 9 am than the usual 7/7:30 am. This meant that a number of folks missed the morning internet window (7:30-9 am MT) but no one particularly regretted the choice. We have slightly more communication with Earth than anticipated pre-mission – our evening internet access lasts from 6:30-9:30 pm MT – yet, our communication windows with Earth remain highly limited with crew responsibilities taking up the majority of that time, whether accessing materials to further our research, sharing photos from the day, processing LiDAR, or contending with the all-important 2-hour window of reporting into Mission Support. We love you fam and friends, but if your astronauts are quiet, it is likely because we ate up our time with mission-specific tasks, which definitely includes sleep.
We collected more rock samples and more LiDAR scans, some, in fact, of rocks, during today’s EVA. Typically, we reserve the LiDAR treatment for the type that are too large to fit in our pockets but the team is gaining additional facility with LiDAR after initial experiences with the technology in the field and is thinking up new ways to deploy the tool, including possibly a future scan of one of Rocky’s devil’s toes (her collected oyster fossils, this is not a new nickname for her feet). Today we also rescanned the Habitat in an attempt to improve on the earlier scan now that we have established our technique with Riya’s elevated monopod (phone on a stick). Each member of today’s EVA crew, Adriana (Rocky), Eshaana (Butter), Riya (Pots), and me (Zinger), took turns so the scan would not suffer from overly tired arms.
Upon our return to station from the short drive south to Kissing Camel Ridge, we walked into a pre-prepared feast. Aditya (Michelin), Gabe (Terminator), and Nathan (Shrub) were inspired in the kitchen and cooked up mac & cheese with a side of ground beef for those who desired it, green beans & cauliflower, mashed potatoes, and cheesy biscuits. Out of respect for me and Pots, the crew has been very kindly maintaining a vegetarian diet and only cooking up meat supplements on the side. (It is muchly appreciated, crew!)
Tonight, we will enjoy some fresh lettuce and kale for our dinner which was grown in the Greenhouse by Pots and the preceding GreenHab Officers. Many thanks to all who have provided for us through their labor and careful tending of our green growing friends from seed to sprout to nutrition source. On Earth, gardening is certainly a source of joy but on Mars it is truly a life-giving endeavor and the import does genuinely feel stronger here.
Our Crew Engineer has also been working on a unique side project today. The stair/ladder from the lower deck to the upper deck of the hab is steel with raised ovoid cut outs (basically, imagine mouths with spiky teeth) for traction. While house shoes for wearing around the hab are highly recommended on the packing list, Shrub forgot his. (I think we all forgot something or thought we could do without. My mistake was foregoing the saline nasal spray. Poor, poor life choice.) Shrub has made it through 8 sols without indoor shoes/slippers but his sock soles have suffered and his feet are quite a bit more aerated now than they were early on in mission. His new high-tech Mars shoeware involves a clever repurposing of cardboard, strings, and tape. His prototype maybe leaves something to be desired but the fashion modeling is reasonably on point, or, would be if everyone wasn’t dying of laughter.
In other happy news, the crew is clean again! Woo, for shower 2 of mission. Baby wipes can do a lot but it is not the same level of refreshing as showering. We are eagerly awaiting our navy shower versus bucket shower water usage results though I fear the data may be a bit dubious with so many other water needs also depleting our resources. That’s okay though, it will give us rich fodder for debate tonight over dinner.