Commander Report – February 19th

Dear Graeme and mission support,

here the Crew 189 Commander Report 19Feb2018

Sol 1

Dear all,

I can say that I am already very proud of my team.

After the birthday celebration of my colleague Louis, yesterday evening, the whole crew spent a first good but quite cold night on Mars. This morning, we did our first physical training orchestrated by my amazing fellow crewmate Louis Mangin. It was a perfect preparation for our first morning in simulation. We were all busy this morning, everyone at his post: the LOAC experiment being fixed by Jérémy and the MegaARES experiment being assembled by Gabriel on the lower deck, the mission planning being determined upstairs after our first brainstorming ever on the Red Planet. With Jérémy, we spent some time, adjusting the spacesuit to put a camel bag with sugared water just in case of a hypoglycemia during his first EVA.

After only two days, the rehydrated food seems to be accepted and liked now (perhaps the birthday cake I cooked yesterday helped)! I was glad to discover that my fellow crewmember Benoit is a really good cooker! Let’s see what we will cook during our mission!

As I and Louis already took part in the simulation last year, Louis was our first EVA leader and I was Habcom in order to teach our new Martian crewmembers what we already know. With Louis, we gave a little briefing about the spacesuits and the EVA protocols but I am sure we will do better after some EVAs. The first EVA team went outside the Hab this afternoon and guess what? We managed to respect our time scheduling from the first EVA! The EVA team, led by Louis, managed to find a good spot for the MegaARES and LOAC experiments. We also tested the EVA Logger experiment of Louis and I am sure it will be a very helpful instrument during each EVA !

The EVA come back went well and they seemed already used to the equipment even if they experienced foggy helmets. After the EVA, we debriefed it to know the feelings of our new colleagues; each one worked on experiments and reports. The dinner will focus on the EVA debriefing and EVA objectives of tomorrow, with a new dry food gastronomic dish (I think the very nice smell of fresh bread I cooked will help again to make my crew like the dry food (tricky
commander?)).

As you can imagine, Sol 1 was especially encouraging! I cannot wait for tomorrow to explore again the red cliffs of Mars with this new amazing crew! After this first entire day in simulation, it is obvious that the whole crew is well installed on Mars! We will deploy our first experimentstomorrow, stay tuned!

Ad Astra!

Victoria Da-Poian,

Commander of the sportive Crew 189

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