Sol Summary – February 11th

Sol:8

Summary Title: Wish List and Microbiology Sample Catalogue

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol summary: The crew had a lovely Canadian/Indian Cultural night, learning about two cultures and getting our names written in Hindi.

Today we woke up and wrote our wish list for the activities we would love to do with our remaining time on Mars. Number one is movie night, games night and salsa night as we keep on postponing it due to the high number of projects we would like to achieve. We still have 4 days and only one cultural night left.

The first EVA in the morning left just 15 min late as one of the wishes from the commander was to take the EVA checklists more seriously. Still the EVA Support team forgot to put a camera in the airlock, which caused the EVA team to do the depressurization twice.

Once on the road, the EVA team managed to install the antenna on the desired location and achieved all their objectives. The rest of the crew was working on finishing the robot and managed to see it turning on for the first time. Unfortunately, the crew could not manage to connect to the robot and has to troubleshoot further tomorrow. For lunch, the team had tortilla bowls with fresh mung bean sprouts that the crew grew over the last couple of days. Mung beans are a powerhouse of vitamins such as A,B,C and E as well as minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorous. It also contains zinc, chromium, iron and they taste very fresh and like peas, which is great for Martians in confined space.

Also, today the inherited Kambucha batch of crew 220 should be ready to be drunk by the crew. A first try will be done tomorrow.

During the afternoon, the EVA team got delayed one hour as the crew only had four EVA radios and two of them had been used before and were not recharged in time. In addition, the crew made a mistake in the EVA window and so when the team was finally ready to go, the team was informed that the EVA window is already over. Therefore, the EVA was canceled.

The free time was used to take four crew members’ profile pictures, work on the sample catalogue of the microbiology samples and identify the bacteria based on their appearance such as, form, elevation, surface, opacity and color. The samples from February 3rd were then discarded to avoid any bad bacteria growth. As we are working on fulfilling our wish list, we will have a games night tonight, after a lovely dinner with fresh salad and cucumber from the Greenhab harvested by J. Todd!

Ad Astra!

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: Mouse trab reinstalled no new mouse caught

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: Crew status with signs of flu feel better, also crew with knee issues is feeling better.

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Photo Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Astronomy Report

EVA Request

EVA Report 10

Journalist Report

Support Requested: None

Sol Summary – February 10th

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 10Feb-2020

Sol:8

Summary Title: EVAs and Kim’s Release

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol summary: The crew had an astronomy lesson last night by crew astronomer G. Alotaibi, so all other crew members had a chance to ask questions and learn about it which was great!

This morning Crew Engineer L. Monge and Crew Commander M. Grulich went up the Hab Ridge road towards Hab Ridge North to get eight more microbiology samples as well as investigate how two different EVA teams with the same route and the same objective will perform.

The morning EVA already struggled to find the Hab Ridge road but managed after two extra little hill hikes. The team found great samples of stones with letch, several stratospheric layers and gryphaea at the top of Hab Ridge Road North, supporting the theory that Mars once hosted liquid water. We already know there are microbes living in the soil from the already incubated samples showing bacteria and fungi growth. Meanwhile, H.Kalucha and J. Todd worked on the robot and almost finished it, which just leaves the programming to be done tomorrow.

In the lunch break between the two EVA’s, we found out that we actually caught our little Martian and we called the rodent Kim and got permission to release him at Cowboys Corner at the end of EVA 9.

The second EVA of the day also had an issue finding the road, but still managed to find it and also collected 8 samples which will be processed today. Crew Commander prepared nutrient agar during the second EVA while being support lead to finish all samples by today to leave enough time for the incubation.

Once the second EVA team came back, they took the rovers to release Kim. The dinner was Rajma and Jalapeño Poppers by crew journalist H. Kalucha in preparation for Canadian/Indian Cultural night.

Look Ahead Plan: Planning of Operation EVAs, last microbiology sample preparation for the incubation and Canadian Cultural night.

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: Caught Kim. We will set up the trap again to see if there is another one.

Weather: sunny partially cloudy in the afternoon light wind in the morning stronger wind in the afternoon

Crew Physical Status: Crew team members with signs of flu doing better, crew member with knee issues worsened after EVA

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Photo Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Astronomy Report

EVA Request

EVA Report 8 and 9

Journalist Report

Support Requested: Raspberries same as yesterday Olive Oil from last time and White Vinegar if possible

Sol Summary – February 9th

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 09Feb-2020

Sol:7

Summary Title:

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol summary: The crew had a lovely cultural night of Costa Rica with crew engineer L. Monge. The food he prepared was delicious and he even brought everyone a traditional hat and scarf from his country. The team learned a lot and is planning on a team meeting in Costa Rica once we return to Earth one day.

Today the crew is half way through rotation and therefore took the liberty to sleep one hour more and started its day with delicious scrambled eggs prepared by crew journalist H. Kalucha.

After breakfast, the team sat together, reviewing their performance of the first week. We discussed what we enjoyed and what the team can improve on, which resulted in a 2 hours cleaning activity before each member focused on their science projects.

The microbiology team made great progress, preparing 5 new samples and taking samples from stones directly to see if more bacteria is growing. Most of the samples the team prepared showed growth of bacteria.

Crew engineer L. Monge made good progress on his antenna project, which shall be installed in the field the coming weeks. The crew astronomer G. Alotaibi is still not satisfied with his images and will keep working on it.

As part of the team feels unwell, crew 221 was not on their best performance today and hopes that it will make better progress over the next few days and also should start to do videos for outreach.

Look Ahead Plan: Sports Session, Meditation Session, Planning of Operation EVAs, last microbiology sample collection

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: still no joy in catching it.

Weather: cloudy during the day, partially cloudy during the evening light winds

Crew Physical Status: two crew members showing signs of the flu, one crew member injured knee

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Photo Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Astronomy Report

EVA Request

HSO Report

Support Requested: Olive Oil, distilled white vinegar

Sol Summary – February 9th

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 09Feb-2020

Sol:7

Summary Title:

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol summary: The crew had a lovely cultural night of Costa Rica with crew engineer L. Monge. The food he prepared was delicious and he even brought everyone a traditional hat and scarf from his country. The team learned a lot and is planning on a team meeting in Costa Rica once we return to Earth one day.

Today the crew is half way through rotation and therefore took the liberty to sleep one hour more and started its day with delicious scrambled eggs prepared by crew journalist H. Kalucha.

After breakfast, the team sat together, reviewing their performance of the first week. We discussed what we enjoyed and what the team can improve on, which resulted in a 2 hours cleaning activity before each member focused on their science projects.

The microbiology team made great progress, preparing 5 new samples and taking samples from stones directly to see if more bacteria is growing. Most of the samples the team prepared showed growth of bacteria.

Crew engineer L. Monge made good progress on his antenna project, which shall be installed in the field the coming weeks. The crew astronomer G. Alotaibi is still not satisfied with his images and will keep working on it.

As part of the team feels unwell, crew 221 was not on their best performance today and hopes that it will make better progress over the next few days and also should start to do videos for outreach.

Look Ahead Plan: Sports Session, Meditation Session, Planning of Operation EVAs, last microbiology sample collection

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: still no joy in catching it.

Weather: cloudy during the day, partially cloudy during the evening light winds

Crew Physical Status: two crew members showing signs of the flu, one crew member injured knee

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Photo Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Astronomy Report

EVA Request

Support Requested: Olive Oil, distilled white vinegar

Sol Summary – February 08th

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 08-Feb-2020

Sol:6

Summary Title: Well done…

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol Summary: Crew 221 played the rover game last night from the Planetary Volatiles Lab at York University, from Crew Journalist H. Kalucha before heading to an early night’s sleep.

Today, half the crew ( J.Todd, R.Alshammari, G. Alotaibi) went on an EVA towards Candor Chasma ,walking along Stream Bed Connector. The weather was beautiful and sunny and actually, the team reported that they were a bit too warm under the space suits. They did not achieve all their objectives but identified places to use the rover on future EVAs.

The other half of the team was staying in the hab. L. Monge and H.Kalucha were working in the science dome on soil health experiments, investigating the quality of the Martian soil being used to grow black corn. They attempted to determine if the black corn and mung beans have a chance to survive.

Commander M.Grulich was working on the oven issue, reading through the manuals and communicating with mission support to find a solution to our high propane measurements in the upper deck. The hypothesis was that the oven was not configured to be used with propane gas as the gas pressure regulator showed no change in configuration. Mission support was very helpful, checking information about the oven speedily, and eventually came to the same hypothesis.

In the afternoon, Crew 221 got external support and together with Dan, configured the oven to be used for propane. Since then, the flames of the stove are way smaller and the oven does not trigger the gas detector anymore. There are also no visible flames in the oven anymore, so the issue is solved!

This afternoon, the team worked on planting mung beans in the Greenhab that hopefully sprout soon. The crew already set a jar of mung beans aside that are sprouting since today to be hopefully ready to eat within the next couple of days.

Crew Engineer worked on his antenna project and managed to receive some signals from Arizona. Last but not least the microbiology experiments seemed to show first signs of growth on the soil samples. Tonight we will have Costa Rican pinto with a mocktail and the Costa Rican Cultural night, which we are all very excited about!

Look Ahead Plan: Sports Session, Meditation Session, Cultural night Costa Rica, Preparation rover and further microbiology samples and ISRU experiments

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: still no joy in catching it.

Weather: sunny no winds in the morning, windy in the afternoon, no precipitation

Crew Physical Status: Good

EVA: 10:00an to 13:00pm

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Commander Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Astronomy Report

Support Requested: None

Sol Summary – February 7th

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 07Feb-2020

Sol:5

Summary Title: It’s all about the Science

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol Summary: Crew 221 had another cultural night with Jessica Todd the Greenhab Officer, introducing the crew to Australian history, slang, the most dangerous and cutest animals in Australia and Vegemite, which not every crew member enjoyed. The main take-away is that in Australia everyone is your “mate” and you have to help them just like on Mars.

This morning, the commander woke up the team to prepare for another long EVA to go to Candor Chasma, which the crew expects to have been formed by water. The EVA team left at 10:00 am and had beautiful weather and the geology of Candor Chasma was very interesting. There were several stratigraphic layers, from which the crew took samples and will try to grow bacteria.

In the afternoon, the team worked on their robot under the eyes of “Fuzz” and made good progress besides one little piece broke off, which has to be glued before the team can continue and probably finish the robot tomorrow.

The samples in the incubator currently only show bacteria growth on the sample of the spacesuit before cleaning. This is also a good sign, since it means the crew is working cleanly. Today, they also produced agar, which was successful this time. All samples have been weighed and tomorrow, they will be processed to grow microbes. Tonight, there will be pizza prepared by the Crew Journalist H. Kalucha and we have a sports session with Crew Engineer L. D. Monge.

Look Ahead Plan: Sports Session, Meditation Session

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: still no joy in catching it.

Weather: sunny no winds in the morning, windy in the afternoon, no precipitation

Crew Physical Status: Good

EVA: 10:00an to 12:50pm

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Commander Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

EVA Request

Operations Report including HSO Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Support Requested: None

Sol Summary – February 06th

Sol:4

Summary Title: It’s all about the Science

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol Summary: Crew 221 had great Mexican tacos and prepared a new batch of kombucha that they inherited from crew 220. It will be ready by the 11thof February! No big evening activities were planned as the crew needed some good night sleep to refill their batteries. The discussions between the crew members, however, become more and more interesting each day.

This morning, the commander woke up the team with “starships” by Nicki Minaj to get the team up and running and also prepared pancakes with fresh banana for the crew.

After a short team meeting to plan the day, the crew teamed up in pairs. Crew Engineer L. Monge and GreenHab Officer J.Todd focused on ISRU plant experiments in the GreenHab to plant black corn in different soils taken during yesterday’s EVA from different places. Crew Journalist H. Kalucha and Crew Astronomer G. Alotaibi started to build the crew robot in the RAM that shall be tested once ready during EVAs, even though several crew members dropped by to help as everyone was excited to build it. Crew Commander M.Grulich and HSO R. Alshammari were preparing the soil samples from the last EVA and inspecting the petri dishes from yesterday. They were positively surprised to find the first signs of bacteria growth from the sample of the EVA space suit before it was cleaned. The air sample and soil sample from yesterday did not show any sign of bacteria growth yet.

In the evening, the crew will have Costa-Rican empanadas and another meditation session shortly before the Australian cultural night, where J. Todd will try to sell the crew on vegemite.

EVA: None

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Request

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Astronomy Report

Science Report

Support Requested: None

Sol Summary – February 5th

Sol:3

Summary Title: Martian Exploration finding traces of Life

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update after last sol summary: crew 221 Earth2Mars had their first sport session, meditation session and cultural night on Mars. The GreenHab Officer J.Todd made the team sweat for 30min using the distilled water containers as weight. Afterwards the team enjoyed their first meditation session, taking a moment to breath and slowdown in our busy day. Following this, the crew astronomer G. Alotaibi and HSO R. Alshammari took the crew to the middle east (Kuwait), explaining traditions and how to dress in the desert using ghutra and ougal that are traditionally used for men. L. Monge then successfully dressed himself Kuwaiti style, based on what we learnt! The team learned a lot and it was just supposed to be a 10 min activity which lasted for hours. R.Alshammari wrote all the crew names in Arabic and we got a lesson on how to count in Arabic using hindi alphabet, which was interesting as the Western World uses Arabic letters. The cultural night finished with an unexpected visit of a small mouse-looking-Martian, which we will try to catch alive in the coming days to release in the wild.

The whole day of Sol 3 was allocated to exploring the Martian surface for traces of life as well as taking samples to grow plants in the Martian soil. EVA team one with M.Grulich, L.Monge, J. Todd took out the rovers to the Moons, searching for traces of water. During the EVA, they found what looks like water channels and saw bubbles in the soil which can be an indicator for microbes’ activities which made the team very excited. Back in the hab, the first microbiology samples were put on petri dishes to be cultivated in the incubator.The EVA 2 team went up towards North Ridge taking also small samples to be tested if bacteria can be grown.

Tonight we are having Mexican wraps and sport session with HSO R. Alshammari.

Look Ahead Plan: Sport Session, Processing of EVA samples and planting black corn and sprouting mung beans, start to build rover

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: A few crew members experiencing signs of sore throats.

EVA: Morning 09:35AM-12:30 PM

EVA: Afternoon 02:10PM-03:10PM

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Astronomy Report

Support Requested: None

Sol Summary – February 4th

Sol:2

Summary Title: Science Brief and a Martian friend appeared

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: Crew 221 is feeling well and woke up to a beautiful day on Mars. The weather today was windless and mostly sunny; perfect condition to set-up parts of our weather station near the hab. The whole crew was working on building our own barometer and rain gage before the crew Greenhab officer and the crew Astronomer could leave the station to set them up on the outside of the tunnels. They experienced some issues attaching the barometer as the cable ties do not seem to work great with lower temperatures on Mars. The EVA team also revealed that we have a visitor around the hab! “Fuzz” is our adorable Martian and the crew 221 made it their crew mascot which we will use for outreach activities for kids.

The whole day was under the umbrella of preparing for our science experiments. Everyone was presenting their ideas for microbiology, geology, astronomy, human factors and technology demonstrations. Luis the Crew Engineer was the most prepared with a 9-slides presentation for his projects for the crew 221. A highlight was a cinnamon apple pie prepared for the crew by the commander. Finally, the crew also decided on their call signs:

Maria -Commander will be “Ewok”

Jessica -Greenhab Officer will be “Gobblin”

Luis -Crew Engineer will be “Frankie”

Ghanim -Astronomer will be “Astro”

Hemani -Journalist Officer will be “Juno”

Rawan -HSO will be “Luna”

Tomorrow will be a busy day getting samples for microbiology and plant experiments if the EVAs will be approved. As we are coming from many different places and the crew still has to learn to understand and respect their individualities and differences, the crew 221 planned cultural nights for all 5 different countries and today will be Kuwait! We are excited about it.

Look Ahead Plan: Cultural night Kuwait, Meditation/Sport Session, EVA for microbiology and plant experiments

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good health.

EVA: Morning 12:06-12:50 PM

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

EVA Request (AM/PM)

Support Requested:

· Food request for:

· salt (empty in new food supply)

· onions (empty missing in new food supply)

· new sponges

Sol Summary – February 4th

Sol:2

Summary Title: Science Brief and a Martian friend appeared

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: Crew 221 is feeling well and woke up to a beautiful day on Mars. The weather today was windless and mostly sunny; perfect condition to set-up parts of our weather station near the hab. The whole crew was working on building our own barometer and rain gage before the crew Greenhab officer and the crew Astronomer could leave the station to set them up on the outside of the tunnels. They experienced some issues attaching the barometer as the cable ties do not seem to work great with lower temperatures on Mars.

The whole day was under the umbrella of preparing for our science experiments. Everyone was presenting their ideas for microbiology, geology, astronomy, human factors and technology demonstrations. Luis the Crew Engineer was the most prepared with a 9-slides presentation for his projects for the crew 221. A highlight was a cinnamon apple pie prepared for the crew by the commander. Finally, the crew also decided on their call signs:

Maria -Commander will be “Ewok”

Jessica -Greenhab Officer will be “Gobblin”

Luis -Crew Engineer will be “Frankie”

Ghanim -Astronomer will be “Astro”

Hemani -Journalist Officer will be “Juno”

Rawan -HSO will be “Luna”

Tomorrow will be a busy day getting samples for microbiology and plant experiments if the EVAs will be approved. As we are coming from many different places and the crew still has to learn to understand and respect their individualities and differences, the crew 221 planned cultural nights for all 5 different countries and today will be Kuwait! We are excited about it.

Look Ahead Plan: Cultural night Kuwait, Meditation/Sport Session, EVA for microbiology and plant experiments

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good health.

EVA: Morning 12:06-12:50 PM

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

EVA Request (AM/PM)

Support Requested:

· Food request for:

· salt (empty in new food supply)

· onions (empty missing in new food supply)

· new sponges

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