SOL 19: Happy Birthday Célyan!
04:36 PM: The morning had two faces. It started calmly, with the entire crew working steadily in the HAB, when around 10 AM, Célyan and Meddi headed to the GreenHab to make significant changes to the crops. Some plants were unnecessarily taking up space, pots, and soil in the greenhouse, so they took care of replacing them with new seedlings. These will be useful for future crews once they grow. After sealing the airlock doors behind their passage, everyone left in the HAB seemed to wake up. We finished our tasks and began decorating the Upper Deck with string lights, balloons, and sweet smells of chocolate cake started spreading through the room. In reality, Meddi was instructed to keep Célyan occupied during the morning so that we could surprise him for his birthday at lunch without him suspecting anything while being useful to the station. At lunchtime, when we called the boys for the meal, the HAB was beautiful, and we all feasted around a good meal, a good cake, amidst laughter and exclamations from everyone.
As we finished eating quite early, we quickly got back to work in the afternoon. Over the past few days, Quentin has been working a lot on his astronomy project. For months, he has been coding a program capable of identifying solar tasks on photos of the Sun alongside his courses, and since yesterday, the main bugs have been resolved. Soon, his program will be ready to process its own photos. Somaya and Robin went to the RAM to build the basis of the SUPAEROMOON rover structure. Meanwhile, Meddi and I are working with the 3D printer, which is still operational, while pounding our keyboards. While I complete a small project related to my role as a journalist, Meddi writes detailed reports on experiments for which he already has results.
Tomorrow, Somaya and I will go on an EVA to conclude the second week of photogrammetry. During the first phase of the sortie, we will search for the beacons using our notes from a 3D map for 45 minutes. Then, as part of CNES’s science outreach project, Proximars, we will test another beacon search route created by middle school and high school students in Mirepoix. It is intended to find the beacons as quickly as possible. These students also wrote the EVA request, which is the request we submit to mission support to be authorized to exit the station, and departure and arrival protocols at the base.