SOL 18: A multi-faceted Crew
“The world speaks many languages.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
When we don’t go out on EVA, like today, the atmosphere always feels more relaxed. Indeed, we usually start EVAs at 9 A.M, which forces us to be very efficient from the start of the day, after the sports session. On the other hand, when there is no EVA planned, we take a little bit more time to do sports, and we are in less of a rush during breakfast. This morning, Leo even took time to cook pancakes for the Crew to start the day well!
Then, each Crew member goes about his or her activities, which can be very different. Today for example, Yves continued working on the 3D photogrammetry map. The end result is not the one we were hoping for: yesterday’s EVA wasn’t useful because the photogrammetry software failed at generating a good 3D map, even though we added new pictures. Our Crew Scientist spent the entire day working meticulously, manually erasing every false point on the map… At the end of the day, his work had paid off: the 3D map was usable, and Lise and Marie could use it to prepare tomorrow’s EVA!
In the morning, I performed an EchoFinder session on our commander Marie. We have some problems with the software that does not enable us to record as many images as we would want, but we are working very hard to solve that. Léa spent the entire Sol on her astronomy project, now that she can make some solar observations. She works on sunspot detection, thanks to a code she developed. Leo, on his side, changed the EVA suits’ dead batteries. He ran some tests to check that the ventilation systems are performing nominally, and that no EVA crewmember will run out of air while out in the Martian desert. In the GreenHab, Mathurin repotted some plants that were too close to each other to grow correctly. He also optimized the remaining space to plant new seeds!
For lunch, we ate a new MELiSSA meal. The objective is to use fresh vegetables in our recipes and to see how much time it costs the Crew. Today, we ate some delicious vegetable gnocchis, made from potatoes and carrots by Yves and Lise. It was delicious, but the Crew agrees on the fact that cooking individual food items like gnocchis is not ideal for time optimization for astronauts on Mars!