SOL 6 : A One in a Hundred Crew
“You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.” – The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This morning, waking up was rough for everyone, tiredness started to appear within the Crew! But everything works well, Lise prepared a core muscles workout session to refuel our energy for the day. Yves, Marie, and Lise performed an EVA this morning. Their goal was to solve the field mill’s problems we had during the last EVA, and to change atmospheric instrument’s batteries. Thanks to Crew members, the field mill is now fixed, but it is not collecting data yet. It will be a mission for the next EVA Crew, we already have an idea of how to launch it! From the outside, Marie also set down the drone in front of the Science Dome’s window. That way, when they were out in the Martian atmosphere, Mathurin was following them, piloting the drone from the inside of the Science Dome. This way, he could capture some images of Crew members on EVA and test the drone’s photogrammetry settings. Thanks to drone’s taken photos, we can generate 3D maps of the desert. It will be useful for future EVAs next week, in which photogrammetry will be the main purpose!
Before lunch, a lot of Crew members were working together in the Hab, while Yves was teaching me on how to use the EchoFinder tool, so that I could perform ultrasounds on Marie. We enjoyed once again a MELiSSA meal for lunch: a pasta gratin with vegetables and béchamel. These meals have a huge positive impact on the Crew’s mood, and as Leo said: “We eat better on Mars than we do on Earth!”. After lunch, everyone took a break. Some Crew members tried to rest by taking a nap, others read. This break at the beginning of the afternoon enabled us to be more efficient during the rest of the day.
In fact this afternoon, Yves and Mathurin started to work on photogrammetry, thanks to the drone’s taken images of the morning. They generated maps and located the places they want to perform photogrammetry for the next EVAs. With these 3D maps and regular 2D maps, we will compare performances of two teams which will try to find checkpoints. During this time, Leo helped Lise to set up some of the “anchors” which record our position for the Orbital Architecture experiment. They are spread all around the station, and linked to the sensors we wear, but some of them seemed to malfunction. In the Upper Deck, Léa read documentation to train herself on astrophotography. Indeed, her astronomy project was about the Sun, but the station’s solar observatory is damaged and not in service… She works a lot to be able to use the other observatory and to take pictures of celestial objects. At the end of the day, we allowed ourselves to take a break to end our last day of the week working on scientific experiments. Is it during these breaks that we feel how much our Crew is united and get along well together. Each one of us is very happy to spend time with the Crew, and we share a lot of activities and talks. This makes our life in the station very pleasant and isolation less difficult to endure!