Category: Journalist Report

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!

SOL 19: Martian topography

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." – The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The photogrammetry EVA of this morning was a huge success! Even though Mathurin and Yves weren’t fully convinced by the 3D map of Candor Chasma generated by photogrammetry, Lise and Marie found all the checkpoints surprisingly quickly: they went through the 12 checkpoints in less than one hour! They identified yesterday the checkpoints thanks to the 3D map, and prepared the path they wanted to follow. It seems like their preparation was efficient! Even though they were fast in finding the checkpoints, the EVA lasted 4 hours because Candor Chasma is located far from the station, and we had to walk a lot to arrive at the searching site. Assisted by Yves during the EVA, Lise and Marie came back to the Hab exhausted by their expedition, but proud of their performance!

This morning during the EVA, Mathurin piloted the drone from the inside of the Science Dome in order to take pictures of a future path we’ll take on an EVA, and to capture images of the station from the sky! For the seven of us, it was strange to see our living place being so little and seeming lost in the huge Martian desert. On his side, Leo, while he was HabCom for the EVA, meaning he was in permanent contact with the EVA Crew, cooked some pancakes for the Crew. We were delighted to eat them as a dessert for lunch!

Like almost every day, various Crew members did cognitive assessments. For the Orbital Architecture experiment, we perform 3 tests per week and per Crew member, in three different places of the station: the Hab, our major living and working place; the GreenHab, a silent place close to nature; and the Science Dome, a more peaceful working place. Today, there were tests in each module! The tasks we must perform are various, but mostly about concentration, working memory and multitasking.

Finally, at the end of the day, Léa and I prepared tomorrow’s EVA. We’ll go to Candor Chasma as well, but we prepared ourselves with a regular 2D map. It will be hard to counteract Lise and Marie’s performance from this morning!

SOL 14: The White Planet

“It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

For this second Sunday on Mars, the Crew woke up seeing a red and white landscape! After yesterday’s wind gusts, snow happened and covered the Martian hills in front of our windows. But the wind, which kept blowing during the day, and the sun, hiding behind the clouds, threw away the white snowflakes…

We followed our Sunday routine. We started with a big sports session, which lasted more than an hour. Lise prepared an original session: we were switching between individual exercises and group ones. After going through seven individual exercises, we gathered to complete a common work out. We did this 4 times, and then finished with a challenge: holding as long as possible the plank position! After that, we were exhausted, but happy to have worked out. Then, we enjoyed bread, cooked by Léa the day before. After this big breakfast, we kept performing our Sunday activities: a big clean up of the station! We had to clean all the Martian dust we brought from the outside during EVAs. Despite it, we spent time working. For example, Lise and I performed cognitive assessments for the Orbital Architecture experiment.

The afternoon was busy with an activity that brought happiness to the Crew: washing our hair! Just before that, Lise, who found her hair too long, asked Marie to cut it, and we did it! Then, those who wanted to wash their hair, and couldn’t do it since the beginning of the mission, could finally do it. It was great! We are proud to have used only 9 liters of water to Lise’s, Marie’s and Léa’s hair, as well as mine. On his side, Yves went for dry shampoo. It was not easy to wash our hair while kneeling down on the ground, with the head inside a bucket, clearing our hair with water from a water flask! But we had a lot of amusement helping each other out, which created a joyful atmosphere in the whole station!

Finally, the Crew enjoyed muffins, cooked by Mathurin. This day enabled everyone to rest and prepare themselves for next week!

SOL 15: Who runs Candor Chasma? Boys!

“He was learning a lot of new things. Some of them were things that he had already experienced, and weren’t really new, but that he had never perceived before.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

We thought we had known Martian snow, but Mars caught us by surprise. Unlike yesterday, when only a few snowflakes were sprinkled on the red hills, the beautiful landscape in front of our windows was entirely white! But this weather was worrying to us. Indeed, a photogrammetry EVA was planned to Candor Chasma, located a bit far from the station. But, seeing the weather conditions, it was impossible for the EVA Crew to accomplish this mission: the landscapes looked too different under snow for photogrammetry to be effective, and the conditions could be dangerous. So, after coordinating together, we decided to wait for the afternoon to perform the EVA, hoping the snow would have melted under the sun. We weren’t sure if it would get better …

In the end, this development drastically impacted our schedule! We reorganized our morning, to perform in the morning activities originally planned in the afternoon. Marie tried to troubleshoot some software we use for the experiments, as well as Mathurin. Lise and Yves continued programming to collect the impedance meter’s data. During this time, Léa wrote some outreach articles for our Web site. With the cold being so persistent in the past two days, we were worried the battery used to power the atmospheric instruments had discharged too quickly. Leo, our Crew engineer, had a great idea: building an isolating box, in which we could put the batteries, so we wouldn’t have the same problem again! He spent the morning tinkering thanks to all the equipment from the RAM.

At one PM, the weather had improved, and the snow had melted. We were given the go ahead from Mission Support! So, Mathurin, Yves et Leo could go out on EVA with the drone, to take pictures of Candor Chasma, which will then enable them to generate 2D and 3D maps of the site for the photogrammetry experiment! Like last week, photogrammetry’s teams were made in the same way, so the girls stayed in the Hab today, while the boys were alone on Mars! In addition to that, the mid-mission resupply cargo had landed a few meters away from the Hab. So, at the beginning of their EVA, the team put the resupply in the main airlock. From the inside of the station, Lise, Marie, Léa and I re-pressurized the airlock and then removed the resupply for the next two weeks from it. It was pleasant and reassuring to see our kitchen cabinet full again! While we were putting everything away, the EVA Crew went to the atmospheric instrument’s site to deploy the instruments once again we brought back to the station during the previous EVA. The snow of the past two days proved to us we had made the right decision! After that, Mathurin, Leo and Yves went back to the rovers to go achieve their main EVA’s goal: Candor Chasma! Once they arrived there, they could launch the drone and take pictures to perform photogrammetry of the area. Lise was HabCom during their EVA. While she was following their actions, she Processed the water consumption data, collected over the past two weeks by carefully making note of the quantities and uses of water, every time someone opened the tap.. Therefore, in the last two week and considering every category of water usage, we used 5 liters of water per Crew member per day! We are proud to succeed at Conserving this precious resource, which made us realize how much water we use on Earth.

Coming back from Candor Chasma, everyone got back to work. Having an EVA during the afternoon was unusual, and completely changed the shape of our Sol!

SOL 16: Sometimes you need to know how to start again…

“Actually, it wasn’t that those things, in themselves, revealed anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could find a means of penetration to the Soul of the World.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

The morning was very busy for the Crew! We performed various cognitive assessments, in different modules, for the Orbital Architecture experiment. The aim is to study our performances in different places of the station. For this experiment, we are also wearing different sensors. For example, one of them indicates our location thanks to anchors that Lise placed everywhere in the station at the beginning of the mission. We need to turn them on in the morning and save data at the end of the day. We also have a Polar Band, placed around our chests, with a cardiac sensor. We wear it during the day, and Crew members that aren’t bothered by it keep wearing it during the night. All data will be collected by a researcher coming from KTH University leading the experiment. Finally, we also wear smart watches. They collect a large amount of data, especially about our sleep. At first, it was a bit tricky to get used to all these devices. After 16 Sols, we don’t feel them anymore. All these sensors are not that stringent for us, especially because we know that the scientific data will be used for interesting research!

Léa, our Crew astronomer, received this morning the pictures she took during the night thanks to the robotic Observatory. It is the first time since the beginning of the mission that she’s satisfied with her pictures. It is not that easy to do astrophotography! She processed data and obtained a beautiful picture of the M-42 nebula! Now that she understands better how it works, she’s hoping for other pictures to show us!

Today, we had a setback for our photogrammetry experiment. Let’s resume the events. We performed the experiment at North Ridge last week, to compare the performances of two teams: one with a 3D map generated thanks to the drone’s pictures, the other with a classic 2D map. The photogrammetry at North Ridge was a success, and we wanted to do it again this week in a second site called Candor Chasma. Thus, Yves, Mathurin and Leo went there to take drone’s pictures yesterday. They thought that the more they take photos, the more precise the 3D map will be. It is why they took 1400 pictures yesterday, versus 650 pictures last week. Even though they were happy about their photogrammetry, they were worried about the fact that the map could be more complicated to generate. How to explain? In the middle of the scarlet desert, stands North Ridge, chiselled by the wind, draped in the usual Martian red but also yellow, green, and white. Although massive in size, North Ridge is not as intimidating as mountains on Earth can be. By its gentle slopes and round shapes, North Ridge is an invitation to climb, guided by the colour gradients of its flanks. Filled with cracks and canyons, with a good visibility everywhere, it was the perfect place for photogrammetry. Candor Chasma, on the other hand, is a scar fracturing the ground. As deep as North Ridge is high, the canyon surrounds you with its sinuous walls, pierced from all sides, like a river joined by its affluents. Angles and sharp turns make for a reduced visibility, making it not a perfect place for photogrammetry. And after 11 hours of the computer processing pictures, the software gave us a map that was not satisfying us… Some points were not located at the right place, which distorted the map. Yves and Mathurin immediately thought of starting again the process by going back to Candor Chasma and tried to organize an EVA for this afternoon! This would have enabled us to not completely change our EVA planning, but this demand wasn’t accepted by Mission Support. We rescheduled the future EVA so Leo, Yves and Mathurin could go to Candor Chasma with the drone tomorrow. It was the first time that rescheduling had a direct impact on the end of our mission, which made us realize that we’ll have to leave the station in a few days… Yves and Mathurin then spent their afternoon trying to understand how to improve their photogrammetry for tomorrow, so they won’t encounter the same problems anymore. Indeed, it is a complex subject and nobody in the Crew is an expert on it. They read documentation and made some hypotheses about the map’s errors. They have developed a new strategy thanks to these conclusions. Tomorrow, Mathurin will pilot the drone. Yves and Leo will follow the drone and guide Mathurin to better cover the area. That way, Mathurin will be able to focus only on the photos and we hope the map will be better!

Despite this event, which mobilized a lot of our Crew’s grey matter, the afternoon was calm. For example, Léa carried on working on the 3D printer, to try and make it work, while Leo and I were playing chess!

SOL 13: Winds in the East, Mist coming in

“So, once again, the world had demonstrated its many languages: the desert only moments ago had been endless and free, and now it was an impenetrable wall.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

When we woke up, the Crew heard loud wind gusts against the Hab’s walls. But we were not surprised: we were advised yesterday that today’s weather wouldn’t be nice. This is why we rescheduled the EVA to the morning, even though it was initially planned for the afternoon. Originally, this EVA was designed to be an easy EVA, just to change batteries of the atmospheric instruments. But, with the wind speed and the rain announced, we had no other choice than to retrieve some instruments in the station, and protect others from the wind. LOAC was loaded in the back of Curiosity rover, brought back to the station, and the Field Mill packed with foams and duct tape in case the mast tips over and breaks because of the wind gusts. We heard the wind blowing harder and harder throughout the day, and we were glad to know the atmospheric instruments were safe.

Winds didn’t stop blowing all day, wind gusts even blew open and nearly broke our principal airlock’s door. Once the problem was solved, winds damaged a part of the connecting tunnels which enable us to go from one module to another. We evacuated the Science Dome right before the tunnels became dangerous to move through, and decided to close it off for the time being. While the Crew was working in the Hab in the afternoon, we were glad to be comfortable inside the station, instead of outside on an EVA as initially planned!

We had some other little issues during the morning, especially with the experiments led by high school students. The plants we were growing with them were nearly dead… But we found solutions to still have data for this experiment! Léa also tried all morning to fix the 3D printer, which could be useful for plenty of applications. She has been working on it for various Sols, dealing with each problem, one after the other. Today, she found some solutions, but she thinks it will be complicated to make it work…

For lunch, we wanted to innovate for our dehydrated meals by cooking a quiche, with homemade dough. We were afraid to leave the table still hungry, so we made a large quantity of it. A very large quantity! We were unable to finish it entirely, and nobody felt hungry all afternoon!

Just before the meal, Leo showed us the mid-rotation video, which he finished editing earlier. We were all very happy to see a summary of the first half of our mission. Indeed, today, Sol 13, marks the halfway point of our mission on Mars! We can say that this mid-mission Sol was memorable and quite eventful for the Crew!

SOL 10 : Time flies !

“The boy stayed on until the desert turned pink in the setting sun. He felt the urge to go out into the desert, to see if its silence held the answers to his questions.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

This morning, Léa, Yves and I prepared for our photogrammetry EVA. Last evening, Léa and I took notes using a 3D map generated with images taken by our Parrot drone, in order to find checkpoints in the North Ridge area. Yves, who chose the checkpoint’s locations during a previous EVA, was with us to check that we found them well and took notes about our performances. He was amused to see us searching, as he knew exactly where all the checkpoints were! The EVA went very well, but it was very long! 4 hours of EVA… it was the longest outing we have been on since the beginning of our mission. We were very tired when we came back to the station, because of the itinerary that was hard to follow. As during each EVA, Crew members who stayed in the station were excited for their mates to come back and were informed of what was going on during the EVA thanks to Lise, HabCom for this EVA. When we exited the airlock after re-pressurization, we were warmly welcomed by Marie, Lise, Leo and Mathurin. They had prepared, as usual, some things for us to eat and drink to recharge our batteries quickly! We took time to recount our EVA, and the beauty of the landscapes we saw at North Ridge. Leo and Mathurin already saw them when they went to prepare the maps, but Lise and Marie will discover the red mountains during their own outing, in which they’ll have to find the same checkpoints but with a 2D map!

During our EVA, just before going to North Ridge, we had to stop at our atmospheric instruments’ site, installed at the beginning of our mission, to change their batteries. We noticed a problem in the measurements, that we didn’t understand completely while on site. This afternoon, we organized an emergency EVA for tomorrow, to go and find the problem, and try to solve it. That way, the instruments will continue measuring data!

At the end of the afternoon, we also took time to shoot videos as a Crew. It is unusual for us to be all at the same time in the same module during the day! We all wore our mission’s polos for the videos, which reminded us of the first day of simulation, 10 Sols ago! Time is passing very quickly for us in the station, it is hard for us to imagine That we are already counting with two-digit Sols! Time flies on Mars…

SOL 11 : It’s not a problem if there’s a solution

“And, when you want something, all the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

This morning, Crew 293 performed the EVA prepared yesterday, to go and save the atmospheric instruments! The EVA Crew, Leo, Léa and Mathurin, went to the deployment site to take various measurements, like tension measurements for example, in order to identify the problem which prevented the data collection. After an hour and a half out in the Martian atmosphere, Crew members solved the problem. When they left the site, the instruments were collecting data. We are hoping that everything will go well for the next EVA!

Late in the morning, while I was performing a session for the TILT experiment, Lise and Mathurin worked on the impedance meter’s data collection. Indeed, we use an impedance meter for our Core Data measurements each morning, which record many physiological parameters: mass, muscular mass, nerve health, an electrocardiogram… This scale, which is linked to the watches that Crew members wear at all times, enables us to collect health data. Lise and Mathurin developed a code to automatically transcribe this data into a readable file. That way, we will be able to share it with various researchers we work with. Then, Marie and Lise found a solution to make the EchoFinder’s software works, we had been struggling with it for days!

Today, the Crew, and especially Léa, our Crew Astronomer, received excellent news. Léa, since the beginning of the mission, could not access the solar Observatory, because an important piece needed to be replaced. It was difficult for her because her whole project was based on the use of this Observatory. And yesterday, she received an e-mail: at the beginning of next week, it may be replaced, and she may be able to use it! So today she could enter it for the first time in 11 Sols, to start training to use the equipment. Her smile showed us that we should never give up hope!

During the afternoon, Lise and Marie prepared tomorrow’s EVA, watched by Yves. They had a classic 2D map to prepare their path to find the same checkpoints as the team who had a 3D map. They spend approximately one hour to study their map and preparing their plan. It was hard for them to find their way through the North Ridge’s harsh landscapes with a 2D map! They think they understood well but have difficulties visualizing landscapes. They don’t want to go in with too much confidence… You can imagine that a friendly competition was born between the 2D and 3D teams! This makes the experiment very enjoyable, and so Crew members are even more implicated in the results!

SOL 12: A Sol in March

“How do I guess at the future? Based on the omens of the present. The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

This morning, Lise and Marie went out on an EVA to North Ridge, with Mathurin. Their goal was to find checkpoints with the help of a map they drew yesterday, based on a 2D map of the site. Léa was HabCom during the EVA, simultaneously processing some astrophotography taken by the robotic observatory during the night. Listening in with an EVA radio, Léa could know how many checkpoints the girls had found in real time. Léa and I were the 3D map team during the last EVA, so we were carefully following their performance! And we must admit that they did a much better job than us… They found all the checkpoints in record time! They had a lot of fun finding checkpoints chosen by Yves, Mathurin and Leo at the beginning of the week. They came back to the Hab very happy with their performance and with the will to do it again next week. And wouldn’t you know it, the three boys will perform another EVA Monday at Candor Chasma, a different site, and start another iteration of the experiment. This time, Léa and I will have the 2D map and Lise and Marie the 3D one. This will enable us to compare gaps in performance, and to know if they come from the team constitution or from the different maps!

The afternoon was productive for the entire Crew! Yves and Mathurin processed data from the photogrammetry EVA of the morning. Meanwhile, Leo did some video editing for the mid-rotation video. As the name indicates, this video may be posted in the following days, because we are close to the mission’s mid-point! Marie and Léa performed an EchoFinder session. They consolidated what we fixed yesterday, in order to get all the devices connected well together, and so the software could work better. After that, Léa worked on an outreach article about the effect life in space can have on the human body, which she nearly finished! During the afternoon, I was busy sorting the pictures of the EVA, and following each member of the Crew in their activities to take pictures, and to know what they’re doing, so I can account for the day in this report!

Sols are passing quickly, and we are close to the mission’s midpoint. On the one hand, we feel like we have been living in the station for a long time, but on the other hand, time flies, because we’re working on a great many experiments and studies! Today, we also noticed that we spent the first day of March on Mars!

SOL 9: Draw me a mountain!

«Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said: "If you please–draw me a sheep!"

"What!"

"Draw me a sheep!" » – The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The day started with a sports session, as usual. But this time, the workout was more focused on stretching. Indeed, after more than a week of intensive sports, we were glad to have a more restful session to stretch our muscles!

During the morning, Mathurin, our GreenHab Officer, spent a lot of time in the greenhouse. He goes to the GreenHab various times during the day to water, but this morning he spent time planting new plants, and moving the ones that had not enough space to grow well. For example, he planted basil because we like to add some in our dehydrated food! Every Crew member likes to go with Mathurin to the GreenHab from time to time: it is the brighter module of the station. Contrary to other modules, the GreenHab’s walls are kind of transparent, so sun rays filter through them. It is very hot sometimes in there, but the sensations remind us of Earth! Plus, being surrounded by plants and greens is very pleasant in our confined environment! During this time in the Hab, Yves continued working on the 3D maps for the photogrammetry EVAs of the week, while Léa and Marie started writing outreach articles about space missions. Lise was busy collecting our sensors’ data, it is very long: indeed, there is about 8 Go of data per Crew member just for the first week of the mission! For me, with Leo, we went through the different modules to shoot videos, in which each Crew member presents a part of the station.

For lunch, we had again a MELiSSA lunch: leek muffins! While they were cooking them, Lise and Leo did not find any muffin tin, so they made them with aluminum foil. But finally, during the afternoon, Lise was baking cookies and Yves opened a drawer below the oven and… found a muffin tin! This problem enabled us to learn that the Crew knows how to adapt and find solutions!

At the end of the afternoon, Léa and I prepared our EVA for tomorrow. With the 3D map generated thanks to photogrammetry, we identified checkpoints we will have to find tomorrow. In 45 minutes, we took notes, drew the landscape, and thought about our itinerary. The purpose is to compare our performances with the ones of another team, Marie and Lise. They will have to find the same checkpoints with a 2D map in a future EVA!