Author: jburk

Sol 4 – Experiments filled day

Author : Nicolas WATTELLE

To be honest, today I felt a bit tired. The accumulation of the previous days and the double EVAs of the morning might be responsible for that.

First, two EVAs were planned during the day. One during the morning, one for the afternoon. But because of the snow melting, we had to condense the two outings in half a day: the first team was made by Matheo, Elena, Valentine and I. For the second, we just went out with Matheo. We tried for the first time, Matheo’s Search and Rescue protocol with drones. For him it was a bit stressful, because he was worrying for the possible unforeseen of piloting a drone in simulation conditions. While for Elena and I it was way more relaxing: we just had to walk in a predefined zone, and… “get lost”. The trial went well, Valentine and Matheo geotagged us very quickly, and we left the zone with some ideas to improve the protocol; it is promising.

In the afternoon, we were mostly all out the hab. Some of us were working on repairing the MegaAres antenna. It is interesting to tinker in a constrained area, with limited resources: “do what you can with what you have” is a sentence that seems like a chorus for Mathéo and I. Until now, we always managed to go further in this tricky repair, let’s hope it lasts! Valentine, Marine and Lea performed sessions of some of our human factor experiments: Teleop and other tests grouped in a software called “TAP”. TAP is definitively our daily nightmare. Briefly, imagine that you have to stay in front of your computer during an hour and a half, answering questions and doing cognitive exercises during which you test your focus in various ways. Sometimes you need to find correlations between shapes, colours, sounds… and “tap” on the right button as soon as you can. The first time it felt like challenging, almost like a game, but once you have done it several times it becomes really boring… But we are dedicated to our mission and we believe these data can help researchers. At the end of the day, it remains a subject that makes us laugh during meals so fair enough!

Today, in my tired person thoughts, I asked my teammates: How do you imagine the first crew walking on Mars?

That started a debate, even if everyone agreed on most subjects. Léa talked about the importance to send experts in widely various domains: engineering, medicine, geology… Marine and others hope that women and men would be equally represented, and more generally that it would be a fair selection. One question that was raised, is the one of the nationalities of the crew members. Does a country will succeed doing it alone, or would it be an international collaboration? Here at the MDRS, some are really convinced, and some are not. Only the future will tell us!

Sol 3 – Botanic emergency

Author : Nicolas WATTELLE

Definitely, a day without any complication on Mars, that may not exist…

Nevertheless, the day began quite well, I would even say that it was a very efficient work morning. One of the biggest challenges was setting up the antenna which we could not set the day before… The four martionauts chosen to do so were Valentine (she was wearing the Hololens during the whole outing today), Marine, Cerise and Léa. And, even if the task was not easy on paper, they appeared to manage very well: only one hour of the EVA was dedicated to achieve the tricky task.

This antenna is made of two big triangles (6 meters high), one in front of the other, directed towards France. It is called a Delta Loop, and ours was generously built by the radio club of Toulouse (REF 31), we were thus proud to see it set up in front of the Hab. We tested it, and the performances were encouraging, so that is good news for the future of our mission! A huge shout out to the four girls who made a perfect shot in EVA!

And then, the first unforeseen happened. Léa lost contact with her buddy beginning the last part of the EVA: her radio earphone and microphone had been unplugged while she was moving. So, writing on a paper to the three others, they decided to come back in the airlock, and the EVA was shortened. But this was nothing compared to what happened in the early afternoon…

We received a call from mission control. They discovered during the day that our GreenHab was compromised: white flies had contaminated the whole room so the future of all crops was at risk. The given instructions were clear: each Crew Member had to stop their activity and go to the GreenHab for a “big and fast gardening session”. We had to remove all the plants that were contaminated and assess the state of what can be salvaged and what was not.

First, we were worried for our disturbed schedule, but it turned out to be a great moment where we all had to work at the same place, at the same time. On top of this, the GreenHab atmosphere is always warm and really bright. Let’s say it, it was a pleasure doing it. But the result was quite sad: only few crops could had been saved, the GreenHab will not be usable for the next days. Currently, we do not know if we will be able to see fresh plants growing before the mission ends. The only kind we kept in our responsibility is the gravistropism experiment, which we are doing with school students back in France, which we moved to the ScienceDome.

At the end of the day, Elena the GreenHab officer had to write her last GreenHab report, and she will say goodbye to this special part of the station, that she had taken care of for the past four days…

Finally, we came back to our activities left uncompleted. And by the time I am writing these words, almost all the crew is helping to find ideas on how to cook the (big) harvest of the day: our lasts fresh vegetables of the mission.