Crew 311, for ISAE-SUPAERO, spent 4 weeks in the MDRS station, from 16-02-2025 to 15-
03-2025.
The simulation started on Sol 1, when the crew closed the door of the station! Ready and
motivated to perform experiments they prepared for a year; the seven students were very
excited to start the mission.
The first week of the mission started with a lot of work! We concentrated our energy on
building the atmospheric instruments: MegaAres, LOAC, the Field Mill and Cosmic Watch.
Once deployed, on Sol 3 during an EVA, they were able to collect atmospheric data such as
dust particles or electric fields.
We also had a lot of experiments to install, especially Orbital Architecture. For this
experiment, we had to install anchors that allow the researcher to know where every crew
member is in the station. This experiment also collected data such as heart rate or stress
level.
During the first week, everyone familiarized themselves with their own tasks, specific to
their roles. Especially, our GreenHab Officer started to take good care of the GreenHab and
planted the micropouss to study them!
As well as the installation of our lights for the Lattal experiment, we installed our 3D printer,
which was very useful all through the mission!
The first week also started our daily routine, starting at the wake up with the retrieval of a
large set of physiological data: temperature, oximetry, sleep diary, impedance meter, … After
Core Data retrieval, each day started with a sport session organized by our Health and
Safety Officer, which we enjoyed every day very much!
Outreach is a very important part of our mission. We place special importance on this
subject, as sharing our passion and commitment to science and the space field, especially to
younger generations, seems essential in the mission we conduct. For this reason, we had a
lot of different projects with French high schools’ students, such as the micropouss growing
monitoring, or the organization of sport sessions. WE started those activities on the first week
of the mission, but they continued all along the mission, with also some video recordings to
answer students’ sessions.
Week 2 in the station started with the beginning of our main experiment requiring EVAs: the
photogrammetry experiment! The aim is to go to a place with a drone, take pictures with it,
and use them with dedicated software to process them and obtain a 3D map of the area.
After that, a team is preparing the finding of checkpoints with the 2D map and another one
with the 3D map, and we compare their performances. This experiment requires 3 EVAs per
week, which we achieve on the week 2, 3 and 4 of the mission!
The stratigraphy experiment is in collaboration with geologies and requires EVAs during the
mission. Our Crew Astronomer, between 2 solar observations, and our GreenHab Officer
specialized in this subject and helped the geologies by taking pictures and drawing some
areas around the station. It is also during week 2 that we decided to write abstracts to write
papers about different topics of the mission: organization, Core Data, outreach, … We hope
to present them at the IAC!
The beautiful solar observations of our Crew Astronomer led to an even more beautiful video
of the Sun, which incorporated perfectly in the mid-mission video we created. We worked
hard on it, with the aim to represent as best as we could what our mission looks like!
It is also in week 2 that our Crew Engineer and Crew Journalist spent a lot of time
troubleshooting AMAIA, our AI assistant. Some features worked well, but all along the
mission we didn’t manage to make it work perfectly…
But some other experiments worked very well at the beginning of the mission, such as the
HUMANISE experiment in which we teleoperated a rover, located in the Netherland, in direct
from the station!
Every day, we continued to fill out our daily questionnaires, for various experiments. We also
recorded every day, personally, an audio for the EVOLSAN laboratory, which studies our
voices and how to detect stress for example. For this experiment, we also wore a micro for a
whole afternoon, once a week!
At mid-mission, every crew member had an interview with the Crew Commander to recap the
first two weeks of the mission, and to take a fresh start for the second part of the mission!
Week 3 started with the second session of photogrammetry, at Sea of Shells, the further of
the station we’ve ever been! It also marked the beginning of the brainstorming session for the
Orbital Architecture experiment. This experiment aims to study the architecture of space
stations, and how it impacts astronauts’ performances. For this experiment, we wore
biosensors, performed cognitive tests regularly, and had sessions in which we talked about
how to improve the station architecture, regarding our experience of it! We had three
sessions, talking about different modules one by one.
In week three, we also started to create a lot of documentation on our experiments, and
especially our Core Data, the physiological and environmental data we retrieve every day. It
comes with a lot of data handling, for all our experiments.
After the beautiful observations of the Sun during the first two weeks, Crew Astronomer
continued to work on his own astronomy project. He aimed to analyze the trajectories of solar
flares, to link them to coronal mass ejections. He succeeded at the end of the mission to
finish all the work he wanted to do!
Crew Engineer and Crew Scientist started to build the SUPAEROMOON rover. In
in collaboration with another student club of our engineering school, ISAE-SUPAERO, we 3D-
printed all the parts of the rover and tried it on the Martian ground!
At the end of the third week of the mission, a hole in the tunnel system led to an
emergency EVA, in which crew members successfully fixed the hole and saved the station!
We ended the week by eating the micropouss that our GreenHab Officer grew. Radish or
wasabi, we were very happy to taste them, and it was really surprising! It also highlights an
important part of our crew : cohesion! We are a very close group, having a lot of fun together
even if we work a lot. We had time to enjoy life in the station, play games, cook together, and
even had an escape game to save our mascot on the last Sunday of the mission!
The last week of the mission started with the last session of photogrammetry at Kissing
Camel Ridge W. Other crew members defined the checkpoints and flew the drone. It was
interesting to end the experiment this way! Experiments runs continued to happen, such as
Orbital Architecture’s cognitive tests in all modules and the VR teleoperation of the rover for
HUMANISE.
Scientific outreach was still a huge part of our actions, with videos filming and answering
questions.
As the end of the mission approached, it was time to start and uninstall everything, and
especially the atmospheric instruments, during our last EVA on Sol 26. This last Sol was
mostly packing and cleaning everything. The crew remained very happy with the mission in the
station, from all points of view: human, scientific, … Now that the mission is finished, it
doesn’t mean the work is finished! Crew still must ship back equipment, do some feedback
for the researchers, do some communication, etc. It is a new beginning!
