Month: December 2022

Crew 271 Sol 7 Journalist Report 25-12-2022

Sol: 7

Author’s name: Helen Eifert, Crew Geologist

Title: Gingerbread Hab

Mars-y Christmas from Crew 271! After four straight days of two EVAs a day, we had a mandated day of rest today. While we all got a little bit of work done indoors today, we spent most of the holiday celebrating together. We played games, finished more puzzles, enjoyed many sweet treats, and exchanged wrapped gifts left under the inflatable baby Yoda tree. Cesare wined and dined us (minus the wine) with breakfast crepes, baked ziti for dinner, and traditional Italian panettone for dessert. It was a restful day indeed.

The feat of the day came from our crew engineer, Sergii Iakymov. To celebrate the holidays, I brought a pre constructed gingerbread house for the crew to decorate. To our martian readers, Earth houses are typically cubical or rectangular, with distinct corners. These standards don’t exclude houses of the gingerbread variety. Sergii took on the task of deconstructing and then reconstructing the gingerbread house to properly represent our living quarters. It only took a few hours, but a gingerbread hab was erected on this day. I suspect it would not withstand the inhospitable space environment, but it’s quite likely any breaches were the result of hungry crew members and not engineering deficiencies.

The rest of the day remained relatively uneventful – always a good sign in space. We nearly had an unplanned launch of space tourists, but our on-the-ground mission support, Shannon, managed to scrub the launch before they made it out of lower Earth orbit. Although we dodged one bullet, we were informed we would have to fill out two psych surveys tonight for Kaosaar’s research project. We had been betrayed by his time estimates before, so we will likely be pulling out the scissors tonight. Sleep with one eye open, Andres, it won’t be Santa coming down the chimney tonight.

Supplemental Operations Report 25-DEC-2022

Name of person filing report: Shannon Rupert

Reason for Report: Routine

Non-nominal systems: Power system programing

Action taken for non-nominal systems: Nothing yet. I will go through and reprogram it in the next few days.

Generator: Running from about 8 pm to 8 am. The generator was repaired on Thursday. The problem was the governor, which had lost a small plastic cotter pin and as a result was unstable and the vibration of the engine was causing the surging. How crazy! We also needed the oil pressure changed as it was faulty and we had the bushings replaced because they would have needed it soon. The technician was great and spent a lot of time showing us what things were that would commonly need replaced and how to replace them. I am very grateful to not have to worry every night about losing power!

ScienceDome Dual Split: on at 65 degrees overnight (when I remember). I need to find the manual in order to program it but I don’t know where it is.

Solar— Nominal but router needs reprogrammed

Solar— SOC Last 24 hours:

Max

Min

Avg not showing the way it is currently operating

Propane Reading, station tank – 61 %

Propane Reading, director tank— 75 %

Propane Reading, intern tank— 72 %

Propane Reading, generator— 60 %

Ethanol Free Gasoline – 0 gallons

Water (static tank) – not checked gallons

Water in GreenHab – ~150 gallons

Water in ScienceDome: 0 gallons

Water (Outpost tank) – 350 gallons

Hab toilet tank emptied: See crew operations reports

Sojourner rover used: no

Hours: not noted

Beginning charge: 100

Ending charge: 100

Currently charging: yes

Notes on rovers: nothing to report

ATV’s Used: (Honda, 350.1, 350.2, 300): none

Reason for use: n/a

Oil Added? no

ATV Fuel Used: 0 Gals

# Hours the ATVs were Used today: 0

Notes on ATVs: Nothing to report

HabCar used and why, where? Yes, to town

CrewCar used and why, where? Yes, to town

Luna used and why, where? Yes, to town

General notes and comments: We have Christmas lights up outside for the first time at the station. They are a simple string across three rovers outside the RAM but they are quite festive and cheerful.

Summary of internet: Nominal.

Summary of suits and radios: See crew operations reports.

Campus wide inspection, if action taken, what and why? Nothing to report

Summary of general operations: Nothing to report

Summary of Hab operations: I was unable to completely unclog the toilet but over several fills and flushes with hot water and lots of dish soap, I made enough progress for us to get through the next two crews and then January, during the time we have no crew, we will replace the toilet tank with a new one and plumb in a cleanout value.

Summary of Outpost operations: The deck with the clothesline has been cleaned off in anticipation of required repairs. We need to replace the surface material and reinstall the clothesline. General outside cleanup.

Summary of GreenHab operations: Supplemental light 10-2 pm. The beans produced and were so good we planted more beans. Beans, peas and tomatoes are all flowering.

Summary of ScienceDome operations: We repaired the leak near the north window.

Summary of RAM operations: Nothing to report

Summary of any observatory issues: Peter and Crew Astronomer worked on the Robotic Observatory last Sunday.

Summary of health and safety issues: Nothing to report

Questions, concerns, supplies needed and requests: Merry Christmas!