Month: February 2023

Sol 6 – If the Moon is made of cheese, let Mars be made of brownies…

“He stood looking at the rocket. The ports were open and his crew was streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of people had gathered, and in and through and among these people the members of the crew were hurrying, talking, laughing, shaking hands. People did little dances. People swarmed.”

– Chapter 6 of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

We awoke this morning to a perfectly well-warmed Upper Deck, indicating that the generator had made it through the night and won against the cold! After two days of unusual mornings, we were grateful to go back to our regular schedule, with a full-length workout session devised by our Health and Safety Officer focusing on proprioception, and a smooth daily health check. Jérémy told us tales of his previous missions in Antarctica over breakfast, before getting ready for the weather station EVA. Quentin, Alexandre and Jérémy suited up and headed out with their equipment, took the rovers, and went back to the MegaAres EVA site.

Sitting in the Upper Deck, working as HabCom for today’s EVA crew, I chose today’s quote from The Martian Chronicles in hopes that we would be able to give our EVA crew the proper greeting when they came back to the Hab! With this in mind, Alice prepared a brownie, and Adrien and Corentin returned from the GreenHab to prepare tortillas.

Thanks to Jérémy, Quentin and Alexandre, we now have an up and running weather station. The EVA went smoothly, leaving extra time to run field tests on MegaAres which were mostly successful. We debriefed during lunchtime, before Alice and Jérémy returned to the Science Dome. Alice worked on her project to recreate a 3D geological map using photogrammetry, starting running tests to correctly identify different types of rocks, to then be able to recognize them on the 3D map. “To identify different types of sandstone, you have to look at the grain size,” she explained to me. “I wanted to use the Science Dome microscope to measure them, but had trouble scaling the image I obtained. That will be something to work on next week.”

Meanwhile, in the Hab, Corentin worked on extracting the data from the Polar chest bands we wear at night and during the day. These measure our heartrate and heartrate variability, and also contain an accelerometer to measure our activity. Yesterday, they even allowed us to see how our heart rates were affected by stress related to the power outage. Quentin and Alexandre also had their first EchoFinder session, during which we experienced the same difficulties as yesterday. As I was also in the Hab, I kept switching between touching up photos, trying to capture a timelapse of a Martian sunset and offering them some help.

Tonight, after the com window closes, we plan to celebrate our first week at the MDRS by dancing together and playing some games!

Sol 5 – “Mission Support, we have a problem…”

“He wanted to go to Mars on the rocket. He went down to the rocket field in the early morning and yelled in through the wire fence at the men in uniform that he wanted to go to Mars.”

– Chapter 5 of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

So, you want to go to Mars? Are you sure?

After a very intense Sol 4, and for some of us, staying up late preparing the weather station for the next EVA, our commander noticed a power outage at 5:27am. As we all began to stir and emerge from our sleep to the sound of the comms radio, we noticed that, like yesterday, the temperature had dropped on the upper and lower decks of the Hab. When the power came back, immediately the propane alarm went off on the Lower Deck. Corentin and Quentin rushed to the RAM to get gas detectors and evaluate the situation. After a careful check of every possible source, they concluded that there was no gas leak, and that the alarm was either deregulated by the extreme temperature, or that when the power went out, the furnace valve was not closed right away, and a small amount of gas was expelled and accumulated close to the Lower Deck floor. While no one was put in danger, it was a very stressful experience. Later in the day, we were even able to retrace the events by looking at the data from the chest bands we wear at night.

Our heartbeats skyrocketed when Jérémy called Mission Support with the Hab radio and when the propane alarm went off. After the power came back, temperatures started to slowly rise again, and we shed some layers. Thank the Martian gods, Adrien’s aquaponic fishes are still alive and well!

Given how our night had been drastically shortened, and because we risked another power outage, we decided to cancel today’s EVA and reschedule it to tomorrow morning. As a result, instead of staying up and starting the day normally, many of us went back to bed… According to our commander, it felt like a Sunday morning at MDRS: some of us sleeping, some working, some cleaning the Hab.

By late morning, it was once again all hands on deck: Adrien in the GreenHab, Quentin working on the environmental sensors, Alice writing an article on meteorites. Today was also official launching day for EchoFinder: Jérémy and I, then Adrien and Corentin took turns being subject and operator, to detect specific, pre-scanned organs during a session at CNES, the French space agency.

After this strange day, we are ready and rested for our rescheduled EVA: building the weather station near the MegaAres antenna. We hope that tonight, the power generator will take its revenge and win the fight against the cold!