Category: Journalist Report

Journalist report, 03/06/18: CSI: MDRS

An unfathomable mystery arose in the Hab in the early morning. Benoît and Jérémy had cooked some popcorn chicken yesterday, yet Victoria did not want to eat her part on the evening, and spared it for today in her room. However, as she woke up, all the chicken was gone! Several people were suspected: mice at first, yet there were no crumbs around the bowl. Jérémy and Benoît then, as the first one was not in the Hab when she revealed her loss, and as the lack of food for the second is no longer a secret! However, Victoria would have certainly heard it if someone broke into her room to steal her chicken. The case is still open!

Today was quite a special day in the Hab, as we received two journalists from one of the main French television stations TF1. Presenter Axel Monnier and cameraman Bertrand Guez arrived short after 7am, right in the middle of our sport session. They could thus observe us sweat during our last burpees, such a nice start. After a small breakfast with a piece of French bread (well, rather bread with the French flag in it), it was time for most of us to go on EVA! Our both journalists were part of the mission: Axel even followed us in putting a spacesuit on! Gabriel, Jérémy, Victoria and I as their leader were completing the quite large team.

As it has now become routine, we made our first stop at Pooh’s corner to put the LOAC back in its place. It will yet not stay there long, as Jérémy wants to have the time to complete some measurements inside the Hab as well. We then went for the road of Lith Canyon. It seemed that Bertand sometimes needed a specific framework, as he liked to put himself in acrobatic positions on the rover, in order to be able to record us following the rover on our ATV. However, the road was rather smooth, and we arrived at Lith Canyon without any problem.

Our guests were glad to visit this place, which is probably the nearest to a Martian landscape we could get here. The walk was really pleasant, yet sometimes maybe a bit harsh for Bertrand, who had to bear his 30-pound 50000-dollard camera on his shoulder. As we reached another cliff, we decided to stop our way down: Axel and Bertrand could thus deploy their drones and take some aerial shots, after a short interview of the four of us. It was yet already time to go back to the Hab, where our journalists wanted to take some final shots.

They could question us deeper during our lunch, as they wanted to know what our thoughts about that kind of mission were. We finally could show them some of the experiments we had led for the last weeks, as LOAC and MegaARES’ ones, Laurent’s solar panels or Jérémy’s human factors one. But as the afternoon reached its end, it was already time for them to leave us, ready to reach Salt Lake City where another report awaited them. We still have a lot to do in the Hab before the end of the mission, especially with our rotation video, as we still have many shots to do.

Hello CapCom!

Here is my report of the day.

Best,

Journalist report, 03/05/18: The beginning of the end

While we were enjoying our evening off, a surprise guest made its appearance in the Hab: a small mouse showed up from under a couch, certainly looking for some food. It has yet certainly been scared by Louis and me, still awake later than our teammates. However, it succeeded in its quest: Gabriel was surprised to catch it eating a piece a chocolate bar he had left near its bed! He has been quick to act, and drove out our little friend, which has not been seen since.

It was even harder to wake up early today after our day off: fatigue is accumulating among the crew. Benoît has notably been unable to get out of bed for our sport session: he got up only when he felt the nice smell of pancakes. Our EVA of the day aimed to improve and test some of our experiments, the main one being the localization experiment of Benoît, which he has been working on in the Hab for a while. To model benchmarks, he had brought some balloons he had inflated with helium gas. Wearing such multicolored balloons, he looked like an astronaut who enjoyed some rides at the fair. Along with Louis, Gabriel and Jérémy, leader of the day, they then left the station.

As it has become a routine, the team started the EVA going to Pooh’s Corner, our instruments’ location. However, as both of the LOAC’s and MegaARES’ batteries had to be changed, it was decided to bring back the LOAC in the station until the next day, as we only have one spare battery. Unlike what we are used to, the team did not go on
exploration today, as they had a lot to do with the experiments. Unfortunately, Benoît’s one could not work because of GPS issues, which he will have to tackle later. In the meantime in the Hab, I started to work on our rotation video: I found the music, created a synopsis, and tried to begin to edit the video: there is yet a lot to do before it is finally completed!

Our afternoons are getting more rhythmic, as the end of the mission is in sight! However, as everyone wants to fulfill his own tasks which can evolve several members of the crew, it is sometimes hard to manage our time! Each member is indeed very busy: Gabriel managed once more our KTNE session; Louis put together a VR video of the Hab; Benoît made new solar observations, etc. There are now only 4 mission days left before our return to Earth, and one of them will be quite different than what we are used to. We will in fact receive two journalists from TF1 (one of the largest French TV station) tomorrow: the day is going to be full of events!

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist.

Journalist report, 03/04/18: Second day off / Special edition 2: About the MegaARES

Our second day off was quite welcomed today after such a busy week. All the crew could catch up some sleep, and spent some time chilling in the Hab, around films and card games. As intended, I will talk today about our second large outside experience and its instrument: the MegaARES.

The Mega Atmospheric Relaxation and Electric field Sensor is an instrument developed by Grégoire Déprezand his team of researchers at LATMOS (French atmosphere and spatial observations laboratory). Several versions of ARES have been developed before, the most advanced being the MicroARES, which was part of a group of sensors on the DREAMS payload of the ExoMars Schiaparelli module which attempted an automated landing on Mars on 19 October 2016. However, the signal was unexpectedly lost shortly before the planned landing time, and Schiaparelli crashed. MicroARES was thus destroyed and could not take any measure on Mars.

This device is able to record the electric field in favorable weather conditions and is precise enough to catch electric field variations phenomenon known as Schuman and Transverse Resonances. On a planet, such electric phenomenon occurring in the atmosphere could indeed have a major role and link with the planet’s climate and chemistry. Being able to measure the electric field precisely is thus a quite interesting challenge for planetology. Utah Desert’s electric field matches Mars’ atmospheric one on several points. Interesting phenomenon hypothesized to occur on Mars could indeed be caught in the Utah Desert.

Scientists of the LATMOS team will have to wait for the next Martian mission to deploy their instrument, and want to use the time left to improve its performance. Analog mission are thus their best opportunity to work on the device. Through MegaARES, specially developed for Earth measures, data recording, data analyzing and hardware can be tested for a certain length of time at MDRS station. The instrument is used simultaneously with the LOAC, in order to study cross effect between sand and electric field dynamics. LOAC and MegaARES will thus give a large and precise database which could be used for future experiments on the MDRS.

We would like to thank Grégoire Déprez and his team for having accepted to lend us this instrument, and for their trust in us for its use.

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist, with the help of Gabriel Payen, Crew 189 Engineer, in charge of the MegaARES experiment.

Journalist report, 03/04/18: Second day off / Special edition 2: About the MegaARES

Our second day off was quite welcomed today after such a busy week. All the crew could catch up some sleep, and spent some time chilling in the Hab, around films and card games. As intended, I will talk today about our second large outside experience and its instrument: the MegaARES.

The Mega Atmospheric Relaxation and Electric field Sensor is an instrument developed by Grégoire Déprezand his team of researchers at LATMOS (French atmosphere and spatial observations laboratory). Several versions of ARES have been developed before, the most advanced being the MicroARES, which was part of a group of sensors on the DREAMS payload of the ExoMars Schiaparelli module which attempted an automated landing on Mars on 19 October 2016. However, the signal was unexpectedly lost shortly before the planned landing time, and Schiaparelli crashed. MicroARES was thus destroyed and could not take any measure on Mars.

This device is able to record the electric field in favorable weather conditions and is precise enough to catch electric field variations phenomenon known as Schuman and Transverse Resonances. On a planet, such electric phenomenon occurring in the atmosphere could indeed have a major role and link with the planet’s climate and chemistry. Being able to measure the electric field precisely is thus a quite interesting challenge for planetology. Utah Desert’s electric field matches Mars’ atmospheric one on several points. Interesting phenomenon hypothesized to occur on Mars could indeed be caught in the Utah Desert.

Scientists of the LATMOS team will have to wait for the next Martian mission to deploy their instrument, and want to use the time left to improve its performance. Analog mission are thus their best opportunity to work on the device. Through MegaARES, specially developed for Earth measures, data recording, data analyzing and hardware can be tested for a certain length of time at MDRS station. The instrument is used simultaneously with the LOAC, in order to study cross effect between sand and electric field dynamics. LOAC and MegaARES will thus give a large and precise database which could be used for future experiments on the MDRS.

We would like to thank Grégoire Déprezand and his team for having accepted to lend us this instrument, and for their trust in us for its use.

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist, with the help of Gabriel Payen, Crew 189 Engineer, in charge of the MegaARES experiment.

Journalist Report – Sol 11 03/01/18

Further, Faster, Stronger

For the second time of the simulation, there has not been a sport session this morning. But this time, that was not because we reached a break day. No, the team just was not able to wake up early enough. Yet we did not stay in bed until noon either! We indeed had an EVA planned at 9am, so we had to hurry! For the first time, neither Louis nor Victoria would be a member of the EVA. Laurent, Benoît and Jérémy made up the team, while I was their leader. We made our usual at our instruments to change the LOAC batteries. However, we realized that the batteries of the MegaARES were also at a dangerously low level. We had to go back to the Hab to ask Gabriel whether we had to change it too, yet he declined, as he believed that could be done tomorrow. We could then go on with the core of our EVA: exploration.

As we were going further north than we ever went before, we decided to ride the ATV: one of each one of us! These ones are indeed way faster and more pleasant to drive than rovers. As we did not bring any heavy material on EVA, there was thus no issue not having rovers. After a 20 minutes’ drive, quite longer than we were used to, we finally arrived to the canyon we aimed to visit today. This canyon was a bit special: he was divided in several stratums under the one we parked the ATV on. The entry of the canyon was decorated by a display panel about dinosaurs, whose fossils are likely to be found here. Not the most Martian of the things we have seen here, but it is yet quite cool to know that! We then tried to enter the first level of the canyon: it has been a bit hard to find a way down at first, but after some researches we finally discovered an easy one. This small trip is the canyon was really nice, even though it revealed to be tiring! We found some small caves where Benoît and I could take a break in, while Jérémy seemed to have borrowed Benoîts lure for small beautiful stones. Once we completed our trip to the depths of the canyon, it was almost time to ride our ATV back to the Hab!

The return trip was outstanding. To be able to drive a lonely vehicle in such a beautiful landscape, the sensation of the ATV rolling over rocks, everything was delightful. But this moment could not last forever, and the Hab quickly appeared in our eyesight, ready to welcome us. Or at least, that is what we thought. We indeed got no response from the Hab: Gabriel, today’s HabCom, remained silent. 10 minutes later, we decided to go back to the instruments to get the empty batteries we left there, not to be cluttered on our ATV. But as we came back, Gabriel finally responded! Yet, it was to ask us to go back where we came from, and turn off the MegaARES… This was however useless, as the MegaARES was already shut down because of the low battery. Gabriel was by the way worth some derogatory remarks because of this meaningless return trip. Remarks we finally regretted when we discovered that our communication issues were due to the walkie-talkies, which stopped functioning.

Our today session of KTNE was quite less successful than the previous one, especially for Benoît and Louis, which were not able to find a specific word in a list of 25 in 3 minutes, and they had several difficulties counting up to 4, which led to some loud funny shouting matches. And today was also the day I could (finally!) take my first shower! I also was able to beat the best score of the crew, going down to 1.2 gallons for my shower. It is hard to say that we had almost lost the habit to smell nice here. This shower was yet really pleasant, and my hair is at last not standing anymore on its own!

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist

Hello CapCom !

Journalist report – Sol 10

Prepared by : Alexandre Martin (Crew Journalist) – 28 feb 2018

Here is my report of the day.

Best.

Journalist report, 02/28/18: Already mid-rotation!

Today is already our 10th day of mission, which means we are overpassing its half. Altogether, this pivotal day has been rather quiet. No EVA was indeed planned for today. After our daily sport, most of the crew went to the GreenHab in order to replace the tarp, which protects plants from the sun, as it was turned in the wrong direction. A task which was rather hard to achieve: the temperature inside the GreenHab is indeed 100°F in order to preserve plants health, sweating the team. In the late morning, both teams succeeded in each situation of KTNE, which seems to become too easy for us. Jérémy had yet less success in his own experiment: he suffered web connection issues, and Benoît could thus not drive the rover. While Louis and Victoria started an additional sport session, making the team question their sanity, Benoît and Gabriel wanted to live a new culinary experience and decided to mix bread dough with food coloring. The obvious result: bread sharing his color with Smurfs. A black market of food is also starting to be organized inside the Hab, through

As half of the mission is already over, it is time to draw a first review of our experience. Our daily life has indeed suffered a dramatic change since our arrival at the station! To take a daily shower: over. To do the dishes after each meal: over. To eat lavishly: over. To take a break outside anytime we want: over. To be able to contact our close relatives anytime we want: over. To be able to be totally isolated: over. We had to become used to any of these situations! Everyone seems to have its own hardest lack to deal with, yet the separation from friends and family is often he hardest, and then comes the food, then the lack of fresh air. We learned to save almost anything: from food to water, from our oxygen during EVA to our energy during sport session. For the moment, no one has for example taken more than one shower! And those were not the kind of shower that is usually had: we keep the falling water in a large basin to use it to rinse ourselves! The food rationing might be the hardest for the team: even each member of the team was near to come undone since the beginning of the mission! However, only 9 days of mission are remaining, it is up to us to continue to work along the same lines!

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist.

Journalist report, 02/27/18: In case of emergency

As today’s EVA was planned on the afternoon, our sport session was delayed by one hour. Yet I obviously forgot to change my alarm clock, and I was the only one to be woken up at 6.30am. Hopeless to get back to sleep, I decided to wait for our evil session: the 3 times 20 second mode was back today. However, it seems that the workout benefits to everybody. We indeed all beat our personal scores in nearly every exercise: Louis for example could do 70 push-ups, Jérémy was able to deliver 90 half-squats, while I was capable to do 85 lunges, all in 1 minute. Laurent even succeeded in making 104 head shakes, though real crunches would have been better. After around 10 days in the station, we are all getting in a better shape: each one lost about 2 to 3 pounds of fat!

The day was dedicated to emergency procedures. Our health and security officer Laurent prepared us a 2 hours briefing on the morning. He explained at first the good habits to have when one finds someone injured. What is the most important is to make a statement of the situation: if the place still can be dangerous, what the causes of the incident are, how the victim is behaving. Gabriel was the one to play the victim for a while: he was repeatedly placed in recovery position and was flipped over onto his back. After these global gestures, Laurent became more specific in his showing. We are not in a Martian simulation for nothing! In such environment, these gestures would indeed be mainly practiced through spacesuits… Some gestures are indeed becoming much more complex: in the case of a vertebrae issue, it would be impossible to maintain the head because of the helmet. Cardiac massage would be compromise, and even acknowledge if someone is breathing or not becomes a hard task. Finally, even repatriate someone to the station would be problematic: with our spacesuits, everyone is 20lbs heavier, and there is no solid hold on it.

Laurent was thus leader of today’s EVA, where he would be able to try these procedures on the outside in real conditions, along with Louis, Jérémy, Victoria, Gabriel, Benoît. Jérémy and I would be the only two to guard the fort. While Victoria, Gabriel and Benoît made a short detour to our instruments, in order to change the battery of the MegaARES, Louis and Laurent dealt with some small tasks around the Hab. While the other half of the team came back shortly after, they were ready to go on with the procedures. Victoria seemed to quite enjoy the recovery position, as she has often been in this situation. The team dealt with a lot of different situations and diagnosis, in order to cover a large amount of the injury possibilities that could one day happen into space. In the meantime, I served as HabCom for the team: I was their referent inside of the Hab, harvesting the data they give me about the resources of the station, such as water level, the state of our vehicles, etc. They finally came back into the Hab after only 2 hours, as they had completed everything they wanted to do.

Our evening was punctuated by our traditional KTNE session, which is becoming increasingly harder: instructions are now incomplete in each manual, and teammates have to be coordinated in order to be able to succeed. Gabriel also gave us the first ranking: Victoria and I are at the moment on the top, yet things will certainly change rapidly, as the hardest part is to come! Benoît also seems to be getting some issues dealing with food: while we split our remaining energy bars yesterday between the crew, he already ate almost half of them! It will be hard to keep going like this until the end of the mission!

Hello Capcom !

Journalist report – Sol 08

Prepared by : Alexandre Martin (Crew Journalist) – 26 feb 2018

Here is my report of the day

Best regards.

Journalist report, 02/26/18: Water on Mars?

As most of the crew became increasingly hungry over the days, Benoît, with the help of Jérémy, decided to make pizzas. That was not an easy task using only dehydrated products! However, along with some seasonings that Jérémy brought back from the GreenHab, those pizzas were literally amazing, and to go to bed with a full stomach was deeply appreciated!

“Wake up”! This time, I was indeed not woken up by my alarm, that I forgot to put back after our day off, but by Victoria, knocking on my door. After a resting day for our muscles, it was time to go back to sport, and to bring back our body aches. An EVA was also planned for today. And for the first time of the mission, neither Louis nor Victoria would be EVA leader! Jérémy was the one to lead today, accompanied by Gabriel, Victoria and me. We made a short stop at our experiments, in order to change the LOAC battery. However, the voltmeter seemed to have caught a cold, and could not give any information. Jérémy thus almost confused the battery to take back to the Hab with the battery to plug to the LOAC. After having gone further and further north since the beginning of the mission, we decided to travel south this time. However, our map played a few tricks to us, and we had some troubles finding the place we wanted to go to.

We finally arrived at the rim of the canyon we wanted to visit, and we made a small detour in order to be able to get into it. We discovered here something we did not think we would find in such environments: some large bodies of frozen shallow water. Jérémy could not prevent himself from walking on one of them, yet he rapidly stopped when he realized that some cracks began to initiate. After having completed our trip in the canyon and having taken some photos, we went back to our vehicles, and we decided to go back home. This has been a quite short yet very nice EVA!

As our reserves of pasta and rice are starting to decline dangerously, we now have to assault our stock of beans, surely nourishing, but still a lot less tasty. As usual, we spent a lot of our afternoon time playing “Keep talking and nobody explodes”: the difficulty is now way higher (Louis quite notably paid the price) and our team have been split up, leading to some misapprehension and misunderstandings.

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist

Journalist report – Sol 07

Prepared by : Alexandre Martin (Crew Journalist) – 25 feb 2018

Here is my report of the day

Best regards.

Journalist report, 02/25/18: First day off / Special edition 1: About the LOAC

On day off for the entire team today: no sport or EVA, yet we remain on simulation, and everyone did work a bit on their experiments or on other tasks. Benoît, Laurent and I helped Jérémy transplant carrots in new pots, while Louis finished his work on our encouragements video for our schoolmates preparing their apparition in famous French show “Questions pour un champion”. The rest of the day has been a complete break for the team, before the beginning of our second week of mission: Jérémy and Gabriel have had the luxury to take their first shower today, whereas Laurent and Benoît already took one. Only Louis, Victoria and I still did not have that opportunity. But that does not imply that we are covered by dirt! We indeed wash ourselves daily with disinfecting wipes, which is nonetheless an appreciated comfort.

As I do not have so much more to tell about the crew today, I will explain the purpose of the experience hidden behind the strange name LOAC, as this name has already been quoted several times in my reports. The Light Optical Aerosol Counter (LOAC) is used to measure the air’s concentration in aerosols, which are fine particles in suspension. It gives the size distribution of these particles as well as an indication of their typology (carbon, minerals, salt, liquid, etc.). The purpose of this experiment is to use the instrument in different conditions to get new measurements and analyze their meaning. Two types of measurements will be harvested : outdoor ones, to get information about the airborne dust, and indoor ones, to see how the air quality of a confined space changes according to the activities crew members are having (cooking, changes between day and night, particles brought back from EVA, etc.).

Such particles have indeed an important impact on a planet’s atmosphere, mainly on its climate, but also on human health, the most obvious example being carbon particles, which can stick to lungs and cause severe damages. We have still a lot to learn about Martian atmosphere, its composition and chemistry. This type of instrument has indeed never been used in any space mission before; it would thus give unprecedented science results on another planet’s atmosphere! It is also a great tool to control air quality in a confined space, because of its small size and low consumption as well as the precision of its measurements. Considering a long term space mission, this is an important factor that needs to be controlled; it could prevent disastrous catastrophes and allow a full-time survey of air quality. As you already know if you read some of my reports, we had lots of difficulties in deploying the LOAC, mainly because of its alimentation, yet it is now fully functional!

We would like to thank Jean-Baptiste Renard, research supervisor at CNRS (French main scientific research center) and developer of the LOAC, for having accepted to lend us this instrument, and for his trust in us for its use.

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist, with the help of Jérémy Auclair, Crew 189 GreenHab officer, in charge of the LOAC experiment.