Month: February 2023

Crew 274 Journalist Report 2-2-2023

Sol: 4

Author: Tony DiBernardo, Crew Journalist

Title: Steal My Sunshine

Crew 274 woke up this morning at 7:30am to the song “Steal My Sunshine” by LEN and a recorded message from the Grad Studies Office, offering well wishes on their mission. The team made oatmeal and continued their Emotional Recognition Test and Psychological Surveys.

EVA Activity

Today didn’t go entirely as planned for the crew’s scheduled EVAs. Every night, the crew writes their plans and submits them to Mission Control for approval, which was received before the end of our comms window. The crew woke up and began preparing for the EVA, but due to a miscommunication between Mission Control and the crew, the EVA was canceled, giving the crew more time in the hab than originally planned. They planned the upcoming EVAs, debated the possibility of life in the universe, and gave the hab a good cleaning.

GreenHab

After an active first sol, planting all of his micro greens and LDEF seeds, most of GreenHab Officer Hines’ daily activities include recording data and notes on the continual progress of both subjects. Overall, the most significant progress was seen in the rapid development of the cress, with strong evidence of early germination of the broccoli, red cabbage, and arugula micro greens. Unfortunately, no progress has been evident in the LDEF seeds, though they will continue to be monitored closely in the coming days following an adjustment in growth tent temperature and reduction in daily watering to avoid over saturation.

Astronomy

Astronomers Loy and Pena observed multiple features across the Sun’s upper atmosphere, the chromosphere. They observed 8 solar dark spots and multiple granule features across the chromosphere, but the astronomers’ search for prominences came up short with no findings. Photo and video data was not collected today as remaining images from Sol day 3 are still being stacked, analyzed, and configured.

Hab Design

Hab Specialist Bill O’Hara continued the development of a case study of the Mars Desert Research Station. This study will review the architecture of the MDRS habitable elements from the point-of-view of a crew member and discusses the design, activity allocations, use-of-space, traffic flow, outfitting, systems and stowage capability of each. Today O’Hara completed a review of the Science Dome module, Musk Observatory module, and the tunnel system that connects all the modules together. His next steps will include a review of the lower and upper levels of the hab module which will be scheduled around EVA support and participation and other science and operations support.

Resource Utilization in Spaceflight

Commander Guthrie is on sol 4 of a two-week case study on the self-sufficiency of food requirements for short-term space flight. Its goal is to develop a low impact and sustainable dietary requirement for astronauts who may travel as long as two years in space. It hopes to provide an optimal mass to nutrient ratio based on the astronaut. It uses only pre-packaged dehydrated meals curated for the specific nutritional needs of the person. This study was performed at other analogs but this is the first time a woman is serving as the case study subject. As women continue to make a larger presence in spaceflight, it is important to strive to continue to understand food impact requirements. A notable difference from the analog environment and spaceflight, is that many analogs focus on community cooking and meal times whereas analyzing self-sustainment is more analogous to the spaceflight environment.

Tonight, the crew is keeping an eye out for cloudy skies that could affect viewing conditions for astronomical observations, as well as looking forward to a new day to conduct more research and to improve our analog operations as a crew.

Crew 274 Journalist Report 2-1-2023

Sol: 3

Author: Tony DiBernardo, Crew Journalist

Title: Holocene and Harvest

The members of Crew 274 woke up this morning to the song “Holocene” by Bon Iver, sent to them by Dean Welsch, the Head of the School of STEM at APUS. His message outlined how appropriate the song is for our mission. “Holocene” is the name of our most recent geologic era of Earth’s history, where humans realize they are part of something bigger than themselves. What better than this to inspire us to continue our mission in preparing the future generations that will found a new settlement on Mars.

EVA Activity

After doing two EVAs on each of the first two sols of the mission, the crew took a break from EVAs today to focus on preparing tomorrow’s EVA to deliver the cache a 2-hour hike away for HSO Pender’s experiment.

GreenHab

Greenhab Officer Hines conducted daily research data shortly after conducting GreenHab operations at 11:00 am MST. Similar to the day prior, both microgreen and LDEF seed sets are retaining both temperatures and moisture while sustaining overnight temperatures. Additionally, the first signs of germination have been noted in both the cress and red cabbage microgreens, which will continue to be monitored closely over the upcoming days alongside the progress of the LDEF seed sets. To the

Astronomy

Chief Astronomer Pena and Heliophysicist Loy captured 70,000 images of heliophysic phenomena. These photos and videos supported critical space weather data and generated distinct, measurable visuals of the Sun’s outermost layer, the chromosphere, and solar dark spots, heliophysical granules, and solar prominences. This data was then analyzed, staked, measured, and configured through 3 astrophysics software applications. The resulting images will be used to help the astronomy crew in their scientific assessments of solar cycles and its implication to space weather.

Engineering and Hab Design

Hab Specialist O’Hara worked with Crew Engineer Lojek to troubleshoot and return the Musk Solar Observatory to nominal working order after experiencing a limit switch malfunction. O’Hara also completed an in-depth review of the Repair and Assembly Module (RAM) and the GreenHab, gathering photo documentation, and dimensional, concept of operations, traffic flow, systems and layout notes.