Category: Journalist Report

WATER = AIR = MIZU

WATER AND (HUMAN) BODY
Mayday…
Mayday…
Water contaminated…
Water contaminated…
(Copy from MDRS Radio Conversation on SOL#08)

Water is essential for cells to function properly, means it enters into the composition of the cells. Water as a main constituent of blood contributes to the transport of nutrients to the cells. In deed the nutrients are transported by the blood. Water also is just as important to our bodies as it is to life on earth.
In our SIM at MDRS right now, we only can take shower once per 3 or 4 days. Not like on Earth (in reality) where we can actively – do a properly – wash our body as much as we want.
Anyway, talking about “water”, since we were born to this planet, water accounted for nearly 80 percent of our body weight and accounts for as much as 70 percent as our adult body. Similarly, nearly three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Unlike the earth, our “human body” can easily lose large percentages of its water content whereas all the water that existed on the earth millions of years ago is still present today.

NEW BUSSINESS ON MARS ; Can i have IceCream please…
Memory, Water, and Brain…
Which one you will choose if the only have one option to taking care the most… Hmm, NONE i guess ; and yup! those three option stay in one line direction in our body system. For example, our brain uses 20 percent of the total oxygen in your body. If your brain loses blood for 8 to 10 seconds, you will lose consciousness. And when we were born, our brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life. What do you think?
Related with the memory, every time we recall a memory or have a new thought, we are creating a new connection in your brain. And you know exactly “water” is the most we need on this body system.
And how about if we can put “our tent” on MARS and enjoy our entire life over there? And where i can buy ice-cream? 🙂 …Lately we heard that some scientist found clean water ice just below MARS surface, so then the next question is : Can we do mining there…or can we use water as much as we want to support our life in Red Planet?

Problem is, properties of that ice, how pure it is, how deep it goes, what shape it takes and also how big is that, are still a mystery. We didn,t know exactly until nowdays, but we are sure that there is “ice” under. But they also said, some trouble how to explore is, dirt, rocks, and other surface-level contaminants make it hard to study the stuff. MARS landers can dig or drill into some meters from the surface. Its possible to do in the coming years.
“On Mars, when you see something bright, it usually means ice,” says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for the MARS Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was unaffiliated with the study.
Frozen water also lies beneath the surface. Scientists discovered a slab of ice as large as California and Texas combined in the region between the equator and north pole of the Red Planet. And the European Space Agency’s MARS Express spacecraft captured images of sheets of ice in the cooler, shadowed bottoms of craters, which suggests that liquid water can pool under appropriate conditions.
INTERESTED TO HAVE A NEW ICE CREAM BUSSINESS IN THE FUTURE HUMAN COLONY UP THERE?

Seriously, its possible to make your DIY ice-cream on MARS mission. 🙂
(…like we did once during our SIM right now in MDRS…)

Hi CapCom,

this is the Journalist Report on sol 11.

Best,
Miho XO crew191

—

OUR (BODY) MISSION TO MARS (O.B.M.T.M)

Diplomacy or Expansion of Humanity?
There is no doubt that MARS will be challenging.
Highly level of the research about MARS said that ; recent workshops and studies have also shown that missions to MARS are both achievable and affordable.
Its true, no one say that those statement are wrong, but why we need to jump into Red Planet where had not enough support life for human?
Sending a manned mission to MARS is a fantastic adventure…, many scientists said, BUT is that true?
Look at on the data, when we start to go for space travel, means that we are agree that : Living for any period of time in low gravity causes the human body to fall apart. The usual processes that keep bones strong and healthy do not function without gravity and the ability to apply a load. In deep space there is no gravity and so it becomes hard to load bones in the right way. Muscles can also waste away while cardiovascular fitness has also been seen to deteriorate. And to stay and to create a colony in MARS, we also have to think about there has also been some evidence that gravity can affect the way the brain works. Then from all of this could make the astronaut’s mission once they arrive on MARS automatically become much harder.

If we thought that this mission will be the huge expansion of humanity, then we need to start to think about our (realistic) imagination : to be sure, when we dream of the far future, we can easily envision beings that combine today’s human bodies with advanced technology to produce a human-machine hybrid far more capable of long journeys and survival in strange situations than individuals are today.
A bit opposite with the fact that when human go faraway for space travel also means no way to escape ; and potentially highly stressful situations to deal with, the crew (for example crew in MDRS) would need to also need to be exceptionally good at working as a team. Like now we took a SIM here in MDRS, do we feel we are isolated? What we are now?
Human (as a machine) and Machine (it self); which one stronger?
WE are a human !
Anyone who read this are human ! We have a (body) human.
Yes, human body is very complicated, very difficult machine or we can say that it is a biological autonomous system which depend to million numbers of parameters (we even never know how big all those data from our each body human). Our body is fully controlled machine which consist of many sub systems like input system (senses) , output system, processor (brain), memory, energy production system (digestion system + respiratory system), hardware system (musculoskeletal system), signal transmission system (central nerves system ) , and also of course a system for reproduction.
And the scary one is fact that, human become a machine rather than machine become a human, right?
The extent to which human beings are willing to be duped by computers is already very large. One doesn’t have to write a very sophisticated program to get people to treat it as if it were a living thing. You don’t have to build a very sophisticated robot to get people to treat it as if it were an animal. If it’s fluffy and it’s smiles or it woofs, or something like that, people are very ready and willing to smudge over the difference in their own minds between a computer and a human being.
So, what the near future for human civilization right now? MARS mission, or become a machine? OR the human as a machine mission to MARS? OR to generate a human machine in MARS?
One of the critical question was People think that MARS mission is a part of entertainment, and human as an ACTOR to keep going on producing an image about the Red Planet. Maybe this is a paradox for our life right now and in the same time could be a very good question for the next generation on Earth.
So, which one stronger then?
However, the body is not a machine. Machines are products of design, bodies are products of natural selection, and that makes them different in fundamental ways. The organic complexity of bodily mechanisms is qualitatively different from the mechanical complexities of machines.
And we are the human or the machine?
Human
(Natalie Neo 2014)
As we grow, we learn that
it’s critical to be logical, and
it’s only logical to be critical.

As we learn, we strive to
Detach from what we were attached to, only being more
Attached to what we were trying to detach from.

As we strive, we realize that
Many things aren’t real
and real things aren’t many.

As we realize, we understand why
Humans hope, love and dream, as
hope, love and dreams make us –

Human.

Hi CapCom,

this is our Journalist Report on sol 6.

Best,

Miho XO crew191

—

MARS is a harsh, (and) cold world.

MDRS is a harsh, (but) cool time tunnel 🙂

Journalist Report

The First Shower and The First Coolness

MARS atmosphere is about more than 100 times thinner than Earth’s. And without a “thermal layer”, MARS can not retain any heat energy. On average, the temperature on MARS is about minus 80 degree Fahrenheit (equal : minus 60 degrees Celsius). And the next question is, why we “able” to feel cold?

Two thing that make me interested to find the answer of this question, first we feel cold because of Iron Level in our body, means that Iron is a critical part of the blood. It helps red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body, ensuring each cell can function properly. Equally, iron deficiency can impact this process, and it is believed that this can lead to feeling cold all the time. A scientific study aimed to identify the relationship between iron levels and body temperature. Other reason is Heat Transfer. , and remember that there are three ways that heat can transfer: conduction, convection and radiation.

And…

How we can know that we have a feeling about things HOT or COLD then?

“Hot” and “cold” are relative terms that we can use to compare how things feel when they have more or less of a certain kind of energy we call heat.

Our Commander, Yusuke Murakami : took the first shower in the 2nd day of the mission, with “out of service heater” 🙂 Cold as hell he said,

Like a… “Mars ain’t no kind of place to raise your kids; in fact it’s cold as hell” sang the legend Elton John : “Rocket Man”!, and although the song was released in 1972 — four years before our robotic machine from earth was the first successful landing on MARS Planet. Once Again, MARS was our long period of the imagination on science fiction history before crazy scientist create a rocket. And MARS Isn’t as Earthlike as it might look.

MDRS is on Desert,

And Fact that ; In that way MARS is like an Earthly desert; even after a blisteringly hot day the temperatures can plummet at night, leaving an ill-prepared camper shivering beneath the cold glow of starlight. Except on MARS, where the Sun is only 50% as bright as on Earth and the atmosphere only 1% as dense, the nighttime lows dip to Arctic depths. Our experience here on MDRS took us into one journey of other side of imagination about MARS look like, and perhaps one project from Wataru Okamoto ; DIY machine called PM2.5 – a measurement instrument as for : Environmental Monitoring System will make complete. And in this mission, he can tell us about Calculation of Mass Concentration in the air and develop from Stand Alone instrument into wider range type of measurement tools that we can explore more to be aware about our environment.

“Deserts on Earth have very extreme temperature ranges,” says Mars Science Laboratory Deputy Project Scientist, Ashwin Vasavada. “So if you take a desert on Earth and put it in a very thin atmosphere 50% farther from the Sun, you’d have something like what we’re seeing at Gale Crater.”

Then we are here ! 🙂

So, how cold is space? That’s a nonsense question. It’s only when you put a thing in space, like a Space Ship, rock, MDRS space suit, or an astronaut, that you can measure temperature.

To the next our curiosity ; Are we ready for the COLD WORLD up there? MDRS is one of the option to test and to learn how to stay and focus on the rules and practicing MARS space protocol. Lots of impression and keep us warmer with those chaotic and activities. Like we sucked up into an alternate Time Tunnel 🙂

ガラス越しの風景がくれたもの

29th, March 2018 MDRS time

河村信(クルージャーナリスト)

扉が閉まってから3日が経ちました。

それは、外の景色を自分の目でダイレクトに見ることが出来なくなって３日経ったということです。基地の中では窓ガラス越し、宇宙服を着れば、ヘルメット越しの景色です。

火星は、人間の生身の体が大気に触れることを許してくれない空間です。

EVA（船外活動）に出てみれば、いつも当たり前に出来ることが何ひとつとして出来ません。まず、顔を触れない。鼻水が出ても、かむことさえ出来ません。雄大なMDRSの景色に心打たれても、その表現手段は限られてしまいます。カメラのファインダーが全く見えませんし、操作もままなりません。ここに来る前に、様々な状況を自分なりにシミュレーションして機材を選んできたつもりでしたが、現実は私の想像を凌ぐ不自由さです。

電気・水・ゴミ・通信・或いは日常の細かい所作ひとつひとつが、命に係わるという状況（を作り出すこと）が、私たちが当たり前に感じている日常が日常でなくなっていくトンネルをくぐりぬけているような気持ちにします。自分の目で外を見れない3日という時間は、いま私たちは別世界に来ていると感じるに充分な時間でした。

それは同時に、私たちCrew191が、いまどこまでも無骨に、ここは火星だというシミュレーションに挑んでいることに他ならないと思います。誰ひとりとしてここを地球だと思っていません。朝起きてから夜寝るまで、皆が「本気」で「火星」の日常に挑んでいます。

だからこそ、お互いにミッションに対して活発な議論が生まれ、時には強い口調で意見を言い合います。扉が閉まっただけでこんな空間が砂漠の真ん中に出来上がるなんて、その空間の変化に自分でも驚いてしまいます。

何年後・十何年後・何十年後・人類が火星を目指し、その土地に降り立った時、いま私たちが直面している状況は必ず起こるであろうし、その現場を撮影する人は必ずいる筈です。

ジャーナリストが火星に行くとき、何が求められるのか、何を撮るのか。Crew191のメンバーとのＭＤＲＳでの生活はあと１週間余りですが、その問いに全力で向き合って、何かの答えを見つけてから、ガラス越しではない世界に戻りたいと思うようになりました。

今も窓の外を見れば、砂嵐が白いドームに吹き付けています。

少し曇ったガラスの先に見える赤い砂漠と岩山とは、私にそんな気付きを与えてくれる空間でもあったのだと思います。

Hi CapCom,

here follows the Greeting by our commander and journalist.
It is written in three different languages (English, Japanese, Indonesia)

This morning’s EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) was a bit of a special one. Four of our crew members exited the vault, armed with a camera and a drone, and entered the 4×4 electrical rovers. They drove them south and stopped a bit further than the formation known as Zubrin’s Head. There, they exited the vehicles and walked west, towards the base of a single, conical, towering red mountain. At around 100m (300ft), it stood out as the tallest rock formation of the area, and they were ready to climb it. Despite sharply inclined slopes on either side, and protruding rocks near the top, the team was keen on making it to the top. With the drone, they circled the mountain, and determined an optimal path that went around the back side. On they went. This wasn’t the worst climb any of them had seen, but with the heavy space-suits on their backs, restricted vision, lack of water and limited supply of oxygen, it sure felt like one of the bad ones. Despite the difficulties, after half an hour of huff ‘n puff they finally reached the top, from which they could see the whole valley: snowy mountains far in the south, the Skyline Rim in the west, and the Martian plains stretching all the way to the horizon in the north, well past the MDRS and the area we have had the luck to explore these past two weeks.

This was their last EVA. On Saturday, they will embark on the shuttle which will take them away from this red land, away from the dry sand, the storms and the burning sun, and take them back home, back to Earth. Seeing, from above, the area they have spent these last two weeks in was a touching moment for them, and they felt the incoming goodbyes.

Back at base though, there were still things to do before departure. For starters, today was Michael’s birthday, and the whole team celebrated with birthday cake, board games and a custom-made paper tiara for Michael. The rest of the day was devoted to finishing up our experiments, and slowly beginning to clean up the base before the incoming crew gets here on Saturday. Indeed, there is only one day left for us here. And we’re trying to enjoy it as much as we can!

Slowly but surely, our stay at the MDRS is coming to an end. What seemed like a daunting two weeks at the beginning has passed right by us, and we are now only two days away from the moment our shuttle will take off from Mars and head back to Earth. Our experiments are slowly coming to an end, and we can all feel the end approaching.

Our commander, Maximilien, has been the cornerstone of our project since the beginning, a year ago, when we first began searching for funds and planning this very unique voyage. He has managed the team’s efforts with great precision, while at the same time giving more of himself than anyone else for the success of this project!

He is an industrial engineering graduate currently pursuing a PhD in organic synthesis (more specifically cyclopentane and 1,4-diene formation), and his experiment at the MDRS was centred on the characterization of physico-chemical properties of soil. His plan was to measure different characteristics of soils sampled at various locations on the Martian landscape, testing them for the factors which are most important for plant growth. These included pH, conductivity, B, total N, P, ions and macroscopic texture. Some of these factors are easy to measure with the basic instruments available locally, others with the spectrophotometer that we brought with us, and some needed more complex methods, requiring rare chemicals and solvents. These supplies were on the same shipment as Ariane’s culture media, which had an accident on its way to Mars and had to reverse directions and head back to Earth. This prevented Max from performing some of his planned experiments, but nonetheless, he has managed to isolate significant results with what was available locally. Still, this has freed up a bit of time for him, and so he has been able to share his extensive knowledge of chemistry to help others with their experiments – Mario to test the conductivity and pH of his hydroponic solutions, pH testing for Fred’s and Ariane’s bacteria, and calibration curves for Martin. As so, his time has been well used despite the unexpected outcome of his experiment!

Tomorrow, we will celebrate Michael’s birthday with an EVA in the morning, and some cake and board games or a movie in the evening! He sure would have liked some good beer on the side, but unfortunately there is a very strict policy on alcohol on Mars – it is completely forbidden! He will have to wait until we get back to Earth to enjoy a cold one..

Life in our small Martian community is passing quicker than most of us probably thought it would. When you realize you’re about to spend two entire weeks locked in a cylinder of 8 meters of diameter (with a common room of just 25 square meters), it is hard not to feel a bit of anxiety. In the MDRS, the space is located so that all the rooms give directly on the common room, with very little privacy. The ground floor is entirely dedicated to engineering. The outside parts are either reserved to scientific work or are too dangerous to stay in due to cosmic radiation. It is therefore almost impossible to ever be alone. For most people, this is a recipe for disaster. Our crew, however, has been quite lucky. We knew we worked well together as a group, and enjoyed each other’s presence during our brief meetings over the past year. Nothing, however, guaranteed that these feelings would pass the test of time (and in our case, the test of proximity) – but they did! Over the past ten days, we have functioned quite well as a group – there have been no fights, few tensions and many moments of laughter, and so, the time has passed us much quicker than we had thought possible.

One could say that our days at the MDRS all closely resembled each other, and this isn’t necessarily untrue. A typical day like today started with breakfast, another EVA for half the team, and a combination of scientific and academic work. Lunch, delicious as always, was once again cooked by Ariane from the dehydrated ingredients we are now well used to. It is always surprising to see how this unappetizing looking powder magically changes into the food we know so well from back on Earth. We always end up eating just like at home thanks to our dedicated cooks!

Time has indeed passed quick, but we still have work to do. Experiments are not finished and we still have three entire days to go! Thankfully we have received a brand new food shipment from earth, as well as a fresh harvest of tomatoes and greens from the GreenHab, so we are ready to go!

The Mars Desert Research Station is an ever-expanding project. Initially composed of only the main Hab and a GreenHab, new modules have since been added. A solar observatory (the Musk Observatory), an automatic night telescope, solar panels, the Repair and Assembly Module, as well as the Science Dome which has allowed the laboratory to be moved from the restricted lower deck of the Hab to a brand-new area with lots of space to work. Among our researchers working in the Science Dome are Ariane and Fred, both experts in microbiology.

Ariane is a molecular biology graduate, currently beginning her doctorate in the field of genetics. Her experiment, despite being centred on microbiology, is of great importance to the whole crew: she is making Martian bread! Indeed, we may imagine a situation in which we would run out of yeast on Mars, leaving us unable to make one of our favourite staple foods. To keep the bread production sustainable, we would need to get the yeast, lactobacillus, from elsewhere, and that is exactly what Ariane is doing: she is isolating it from human saliva! This is no easy task. First, she sampled saliva and cultivated the many microorganisms it contains in Petri dishes. These Petri dishes were supposed to be filled with what we call a selective medium – a substance which only allows for the growth of a specific microorganism, in this case, lactobacillus. Unfortunately, the shipment from Earth which carried this medium has had an accident, and hasn’t been able to reach us in time. Ariane therefore had to rely on her knowledge of microbiology to manually isolate and cultivate only the required yeast, and no other micro-organism – no easy task, given their very close resemblance! She is currently very close to achieving her goal, and the rest of the crew very close to eating our first true Martian bread (made, in part, from spit)!

Fred, on the other hand, is a biotech and pharma graduate, currently pursuing a doctorate in bacteriology. His fist experiment, concerning plant culture in Martian regolith, has been covered below. In addition to this, he is also working on a microbiology experiment, aiming to evaluate the survival capacity of bacteria in the harsh conditions that exist on Mars. He is using the bacterium bacillus subtilis, a very common microorganism, and placing it in small quartz vials (a material which allows UV rays to pass unhindered), in different conditions around the station to see how many of them will survive. At the end of the experiment, these bacteria will be counted and their numbers compared to a standard sample which will have been staying in the safety of the Science Dome. This experiment is especially interesting because it sets out to answer many questions about the ability of earth-born bacteria, which are therefore adapted to earth-like conditions, to survive in an environment that is literally alien and extremely aggressive. If conclusive, a positive result could mean that the Martian environment is suitable to harbour Earth’s microbes, which could mean many things for agriculture, human life, development, terraforming, and generally our future on the Red Planet.

Apart from each crew member’s experiment, there are many things to do at the MDRS. Cooking, cleaning and the usual chores are of course part of the job, like in any shared living space. But the MDRS being quite a special place to live, as it is, after all, located on Mars, there are additional and essential tasks that need to be completed every day. Taking care of the GreenHab and its plants is an essential one – indeed, they are our life support, producing both our food and our oxygen, and they therefore require exceptional care. However, the MDRS is a complex system, with many variables. If one of them fails, the whole station’s well-being is compromised. The role of the crew engineer, Bastien, is therefore also essential : every day, he checks all the systems, machines, reservoirs, electrical devices, batteries and engines, inside and outside the station, that allow its optimal functioning. His is truly a full-time job. And despite this, Bastien has been involved in quite a serious and time-consuming project of aerial 3D cartography. With his drone, and a computer program designed for this purpose, he has been criss-crossing rectangular areas of terrain, taking dozens of pictures from all angles, which are then automatically recombined in a tedious hours-long process, giving a 3D map of the area, which can then be assembled with surrounding maps to create maps of whole regions.

Michael, our XO and an operations research specialist, has also been working quite hard : his main project concerns something called robust planning under uncertainty, which means that he has been working on a dynamic, adaptable, and predictive schedule for the whole crew. This planning program, coded on his computer, has been designed by Michael from scratch and is still getting improved day by day. Indeed, the point of such a program is to adapt the schedule to unpredicted (and unpredictable) events that slow down or accelerate a particular crew member’s experiment. Since all experiments are related in some way (by equipment, place and/or time), a change in one experiment will often impact many other experiments – this makes for quite a complex system, which needs to be updated daily. Michael has therefore been taking daily notes of our progress, and integrating them into his program to generate the next days’ improved schedule.

As you may think, Michael is quite the computer enthusiast. You can imagine his delight when he realised that the small remote-controlled linux-powered rover called Phoenix, made by members of the NorCal Mars Society, didn’t work and needed troubleshooting. Yesterday evening, he got down to understanding where the problem was, and started working in a trance-like state, measuring voltages, connecting cables and reading and writing code that seems like gibberish to the untrained eye. In the end, he understood that the problem was two-fold : on the one hand, the rover’s internal clock was unsynchronized with the clock of the computer which controlled it, a simple but hard to detect error. On the other hand, there were some battery issues which needed to be resolved, and after 24 hours, the rover was finally set free in front of the base this afternoon, where it performed some test loops.

We are now fully equipped, with Bastien’s drone and NorCal’s rover, to inspect the station from the outside without having to go through the tedious process of getting fully suited up and going through a decompression period in the exit vault. Another step forward for our Martian colony!