Author: jburk

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.

SOL 18: Sheltering from the Storm

05:14 PM: The weather is in a foul mood today. While the entire crew started their day as usual this morning, the sky darkened and the wind picked up. Quentin and Somaya went to work calmly in the Science Dome early in the day, and by the time they returned, the deafening howls of the wind were already shaking the HAB. The entire crew then gathered to observe what this storm looked like from the portholes. We were impressed by the large sand clouds whipped up by the wind, giving us the feeling of being trapped in the middle of a sandstorm. The walls of the GreenHab shook under the gusts, and the hatch leading to the solar observatory’s sky also vibrated heavily. When we realized this, a question arose for the crew: Should we go out to the observatory to secure it properly, risking that the volunteer for this expedition might see the tunnels between the modules overturn on them due to wind pressure? We therefore organized urgently. It was decided that Quentin would close the hatch, and equipped with the walkie-talkie from the Lower-Deck, he would communicate directly with Erin who would indicate when the lulls occurred so that he could cross the tunnels at the right moment. The sky was in a bad mood, and since the corridors were not perfectly airtight, he felt the gusts while crossing them, but he finally managed to secure the observatory.

For a few hours, we contented ourselves with continuing our activities in the HAB. Robin started assembling the SUPAEROMOON rover, but we must be patient and wait for all the prints to finish before we can finally test it. Meddi analyzed the data from the Micropouss’ experiment, and Célyan even tried his hand at embroidery.

In the middle of the afternoon, the wind blew a little less strongly, and after launching recordings for the Twins2 experiment, Crew 311 headed to the RAM and GreenHab to discuss possible improvements for these modules. The RAM is already very optimized; we quickly turned our attention to the greenhouse, but once there, we struggled to hear each other due to the loud wind. We therefore concluded our little activity in the HAB, where the gusts whisper that they still have things to tell us.

Tonight, Somaya and I were supposed to prepare an EVA for tomorrow morning to search for beacons in the Sea of Shells region using a 3D map, but the weather forecast is not good, and we are forced to postpone it. The desert is not kind to analog astronauts; one must know how to adapt.