Category: Sol Summary

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 08-Feb-2020

Sol:6

Summary Title: Well done…

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol Summary: Crew 221 played the rover game last night from the Planetary Volatiles Lab at York University, from Crew Journalist H. Kalucha before heading to an early night’s sleep.

Today, half the crew ( J.Todd, R.Alshammari, G. Alotaibi) went on an EVA towards Candor Chasma ,walking along Stream Bed Connector. The weather was beautiful and sunny and actually, the team reported that they were a bit too warm under the space suits. They did not achieve all their objectives but identified places to use the rover on future EVAs.

The other half of the team was staying in the hab. L. Monge and H.Kalucha were working in the science dome on soil health experiments, investigating the quality of the Martian soil being used to grow black corn. They attempted to determine if the black corn and mung beans have a chance to survive.

Commander M.Grulich was working on the oven issue, reading through the manuals and communicating with mission support to find a solution to our high propane measurements in the upper deck. The hypothesis was that the oven was not configured to be used with propane gas as the gas pressure regulator showed no change in configuration. Mission support was very helpful, checking information about the oven speedily, and eventually came to the same hypothesis.

In the afternoon, Crew 221 got external support and together with Dan, configured the oven to be used for propane. Since then, the flames of the stove are way smaller and the oven does not trigger the gas detector anymore. There are also no visible flames in the oven anymore, so the issue is solved!

This afternoon, the team worked on planting mung beans in the Greenhab that hopefully sprout soon. The crew already set a jar of mung beans aside that are sprouting since today to be hopefully ready to eat within the next couple of days.

Crew Engineer worked on his antenna project and managed to receive some signals from Arizona. Last but not least the microbiology experiments seemed to show first signs of growth on the soil samples. Tonight we will have Costa Rican pinto with a mocktail and the Costa Rican Cultural night, which we are all very excited about!

Look Ahead Plan: Sports Session, Meditation Session, Cultural night Costa Rica, Preparation rover and further microbiology samples and ISRU experiments

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: still no joy in catching it.

Weather: sunny no winds in the morning, windy in the afternoon, no precipitation

Crew Physical Status: Good

EVA: 10:00an to 13:00pm

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Commander Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Astronomy Report

Support Requested: None

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 07Feb-2020

Sol:5

Summary Title: It’s all about the Science

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol Summary: Crew 221 had another cultural night with Jessica Todd the Greenhab Officer, introducing the crew to Australian history, slang, the most dangerous and cutest animals in Australia and Vegemite, which not every crew member enjoyed. The main take-away is that in Australia everyone is your “mate” and you have to help them just like on Mars.

This morning, the commander woke up the team to prepare for another long EVA to go to Candor Chasma, which the crew expects to have been formed by water. The EVA team left at 10:00 am and had beautiful weather and the geology of Candor Chasma was very interesting. There were several stratigraphic layers, from which the crew took samples and will try to grow bacteria.

In the afternoon, the team worked on their robot under the eyes of “Fuzz” and made good progress besides one little piece broke off, which has to be glued before the team can continue and probably finish the robot tomorrow.

The samples in the incubator currently only show bacteria growth on the sample of the spacesuit before cleaning. This is also a good sign, since it means the crew is working cleanly. Today, they also produced agar, which was successful this time. All samples have been weighed and tomorrow, they will be processed to grow microbes. Tonight, there will be pizza prepared by the Crew Journalist H. Kalucha and we have a sports session with Crew Engineer L. D. Monge.

Look Ahead Plan: Sports Session, Meditation Session

Anomalies in work: None

Update mouse in hab: still no joy in catching it.

Weather: sunny no winds in the morning, windy in the afternoon, no precipitation

Crew Physical Status: Good

EVA: 10:00an to 12:50pm

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Commander Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

EVA Request

Operations Report including HSO Report

GreenHab Report

Science Report

Support Requested: None

Sol:4

Summary Title: It’s all about the Science

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update since last Sol Summary: Crew 221 had great Mexican tacos and prepared a new batch of kombucha that they inherited from crew 220. It will be ready by the 11thof February! No big evening activities were planned as the crew needed some good night sleep to refill their batteries. The discussions between the crew members, however, become more and more interesting each day.

This morning, the commander woke up the team with “starships” by Nicki Minaj to get the team up and running and also prepared pancakes with fresh banana for the crew.

After a short team meeting to plan the day, the crew teamed up in pairs. Crew Engineer L. Monge and GreenHab Officer J.Todd focused on ISRU plant experiments in the GreenHab to plant black corn in different soils taken during yesterday’s EVA from different places. Crew Journalist H. Kalucha and Crew Astronomer G. Alotaibi started to build the crew robot in the RAM that shall be tested once ready during EVAs, even though several crew members dropped by to help as everyone was excited to build it. Crew Commander M.Grulich and HSO R. Alshammari were preparing the soil samples from the last EVA and inspecting the petri dishes from yesterday. They were positively surprised to find the first signs of bacteria growth from the sample of the EVA space suit before it was cleaned. The air sample and soil sample from yesterday did not show any sign of bacteria growth yet.

In the evening, the crew will have Costa-Rican empanadas and another meditation session shortly before the Australian cultural night, where J. Todd will try to sell the crew on vegemite.

EVA: None

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Request

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Astronomy Report

Science Report

Support Requested: None

Sol:3

Summary Title: Martian Exploration finding traces of Life

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary:

Update after last sol summary: crew 221 Earth2Mars had their first sport session, meditation session and cultural night on Mars. The GreenHab Officer J.Todd made the team sweat for 30min using the distilled water containers as weight. Afterwards the team enjoyed their first meditation session, taking a moment to breath and slowdown in our busy day. Following this, the crew astronomer G. Alotaibi and HSO R. Alshammari took the crew to the middle east (Kuwait), explaining traditions and how to dress in the desert using ghutra and ougal that are traditionally used for men. L. Monge then successfully dressed himself Kuwaiti style, based on what we learnt! The team learned a lot and it was just supposed to be a 10 min activity which lasted for hours. R.Alshammari wrote all the crew names in Arabic and we got a lesson on how to count in Arabic using hindi alphabet, which was interesting as the Western World uses Arabic letters. The cultural night finished with an unexpected visit of a small mouse-looking-Martian, which we will try to catch alive in the coming days to release in the wild.

The whole day of Sol 3 was allocated to exploring the Martian surface for traces of life as well as taking samples to grow plants in the Martian soil. EVA team one with M.Grulich, L.Monge, J. Todd took out the rovers to the Moons, searching for traces of water. During the EVA, they found what looks like water channels and saw bubbles in the soil which can be an indicator for microbes’ activities which made the team very excited. Back in the hab, the first microbiology samples were put on petri dishes to be cultivated in the incubator.The EVA 2 team went up towards North Ridge taking also small samples to be tested if bacteria can be grown.

Tonight we are having Mexican wraps and sport session with HSO R. Alshammari.

Look Ahead Plan: Sport Session, Processing of EVA samples and planting black corn and sprouting mung beans, start to build rover

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: A few crew members experiencing signs of sore throats.

EVA: Morning 09:35AM-12:30 PM

EVA: Afternoon 02:10PM-03:10PM

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

Astronomy Report

Support Requested: None

Sol:2

Summary Title: Science Brief and a Martian friend appeared

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: Crew 221 is feeling well and woke up to a beautiful day on Mars. The weather today was windless and mostly sunny; perfect condition to set-up parts of our weather station near the hab. The whole crew was working on building our own barometer and rain gage before the crew Greenhab officer and the crew Astronomer could leave the station to set them up on the outside of the tunnels. They experienced some issues attaching the barometer as the cable ties do not seem to work great with lower temperatures on Mars. The EVA team also revealed that we have a visitor around the hab! “Fuzz” is our adorable Martian and the crew 221 made it their crew mascot which we will use for outreach activities for kids.

The whole day was under the umbrella of preparing for our science experiments. Everyone was presenting their ideas for microbiology, geology, astronomy, human factors and technology demonstrations. Luis the Crew Engineer was the most prepared with a 9-slides presentation for his projects for the crew 221. A highlight was a cinnamon apple pie prepared for the crew by the commander. Finally, the crew also decided on their call signs:

Maria -Commander will be “Ewok”

Jessica -Greenhab Officer will be “Gobblin”

Luis -Crew Engineer will be “Frankie”

Ghanim -Astronomer will be “Astro”

Hemani -Journalist Officer will be “Juno”

Rawan -HSO will be “Luna”

Tomorrow will be a busy day getting samples for microbiology and plant experiments if the EVAs will be approved. As we are coming from many different places and the crew still has to learn to understand and respect their individualities and differences, the crew 221 planned cultural nights for all 5 different countries and today will be Kuwait! We are excited about it.

Look Ahead Plan: Cultural night Kuwait, Meditation/Sport Session, EVA for microbiology and plant experiments

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good health.

EVA: Morning 12:06-12:50 PM

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

EVA Request (AM/PM)

Support Requested:

· Food request for:

· salt (empty in new food supply)

· onions (empty missing in new food supply)

· new sponges

Sol:2

Summary Title: Science Brief and a Martian friend appeared

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: Crew 221 is feeling well and woke up to a beautiful day on Mars. The weather today was windless and mostly sunny; perfect condition to set-up parts of our weather station near the hab. The whole crew was working on building our own barometer and rain gage before the crew Greenhab officer and the crew Astronomer could leave the station to set them up on the outside of the tunnels. They experienced some issues attaching the barometer as the cable ties do not seem to work great with lower temperatures on Mars.

The whole day was under the umbrella of preparing for our science experiments. Everyone was presenting their ideas for microbiology, geology, astronomy, human factors and technology demonstrations. Luis the Crew Engineer was the most prepared with a 9-slides presentation for his projects for the crew 221. A highlight was a cinnamon apple pie prepared for the crew by the commander. Finally, the crew also decided on their call signs:

Maria -Commander will be “Ewok”

Jessica -Greenhab Officer will be “Gobblin”

Luis -Crew Engineer will be “Frankie”

Ghanim -Astronomer will be “Astro”

Hemani -Journalist Officer will be “Juno”

Rawan -HSO will be “Luna”

Tomorrow will be a busy day getting samples for microbiology and plant experiments if the EVAs will be approved. As we are coming from many different places and the crew still has to learn to understand and respect their individualities and differences, the crew 221 planned cultural nights for all 5 different countries and today will be Kuwait! We are excited about it.

Look Ahead Plan: Cultural night Kuwait, Meditation/Sport Session, EVA for microbiology and plant experiments

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: sunny no winds

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good health.

EVA: Morning 12:06-12:50 PM

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Journalist Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

EVA Request (AM/PM)

Support Requested:

· Food request for:

· salt (empty in new food supply)

· onions (empty missing in new food supply)

· new sponges

Sol:1

Summary Title: Welcome to Mars

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: Today we woke up on Mars; it is a beautiful morning and it feels like we are just meant to be here. Our first day of being on Mars is supposed to be about familiarizing with the station. Everyone moved into their rooms and we are working on our cooking skills to eat better food than ramen and noodles, so commander Grulich made a German bread and a carrot cake. The morning started with our first ever EVA preparation. After the training yesterday, the crew was already briefed on voice protocols and procedures and checklists to go on an EVA. We only had to find all the required equipment which took us more time than expected. Still, the first crew was out of the habitat just 15 min later as planned. During our afternoon EVA, we managed to go through all the checklists, so the team was out just 5 min late.

Once back in the habitat, we had warm soup and hot chocolate. Then the crew was working on the first surveys for the crew HSO Rawan and crew journalist Hemani, while the rest of the team also is working on the mission plan.

Tonight, we will have our first sports session with Jessica, our GreenHab Officer. Every day we are going to either have a sports or meditation session and every second day we have a cultural night to learn about each other’s cultures.

Look Ahead Plan: Sport Session, Science Day

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: cloudy with high NW winds 25-40km/h gusting 60km/h no precipitation or snow

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good health.

EVA:

Morning 10:15-14:00 low wind speed

Afternoon 14:05-15:14 higher wind speed

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary

Commanders Report

Photo Report

EVA Report

Operations Report

GreenHab Report

EVA Request

Astronomy Report

Support Requested: None

Crew 221 Sol Summary Report 02-02-2020

Sol:0

Summary Title: Training and preparation time

Author’s name: Maria Grulich, M.Sc.

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: Crew 221 Earth2Mars arrived on the station meeting members of MDRS-MAU crew 220. The handover of the station was done yesterday from two commanders Shawna and John. Both crews went out for burgers and after a night in the science dome, the crew started their final preparation to start our journey to Mars. Everyone is very excited after one year of preparation to get here to start the rotation.

This morning we waived crew 220 ‘goodbye’, being happy that we could meet this incredible crew and see what they have accomplished. Crew 221 will try its best to also accomplish most of their mission goals.

Today the crew spent all day preparing filling up the water tanks, getting rover training and moving into their new homes and having our first MDRS meals on the completely new oven.

Tomorrow we will wake up on Mars we are looking forward to our launch!

Look Ahead Plan: Internal Crew Training, Voice Protocols, Planning

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: A 20 percent chance of snow before 11 am. Mostly sunny, with a high near -3. Windy, with a northwest wind 45 to 48 km/h.

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good health.

EVA: None

Reports to be filed:

Sol Summary
Photo Report
Operations Report
GreenHab Report

Support Requested: None

Crew 220 (MAU) Sol 13 Summary 1Feb2020

Summary Title: Touchdown!
Author’s name: Shawna Pandya, Commander
Mission Status: 1g-ominal
Sol Activity Summary: Touchdown! We awoke on Earth today and spent the day on post-mission logistics and teardown. After a wonderful pancake breakfast together as a group, the MDRS and MAU crews came together, and as one well-oiled machine, completed MDRS checkout, took down every last piece of MAU station, loaded the vehicles and ensured that our crew left no trace on the Red Planet. Later, we enjoyed a delicious homemade pizza lunch followed by a dessert of brown sugar brittle, and greeted incoming MDRS Crew 221. We briefed the new crew, took some last pictures to cement our memories of Mars and will be soon headed off to a celebratory dinner together. How time flies…Till the next time!
Look Ahead Plan: Till next time…so long and thanks for all the fish!
Anomalies in work: None
Weather: -6C low / 6C max, 0C average, 10% chance of precipitation
Crew Physical Status: Earthbound!
EVA: None.
Reports to be filed:
Sol Summary
Commander’s Report
Photo Report (joint with MDRS)
Operations Report
EVA Request: None
Support Requested: None – rather we would like to thank YOU all for your wonderful support during this mission!

Crew 220 (MDRS) Sol Summary 01Feb2020

Sol: 13

Summary Title: HabComm this is MDRS – Over

Author’s name: Connie Delisle, PhD

Mission Status: Nominal

Sol Activity Summary: The MDRS-MAU crews woke up at 08:00 and began for their Mars departure. The signature red sky gave reluctantly gave way to a light blue as the sun began to glow. The morning ritual of sky-gazing and sipping coffee will remain a cherished memory of Mars. The Crew was treated to a pancake breakfast by Crew Engineer Wise. Following the meal, Commander Hanacek delegated Crew members to station clean up – MDRS lower deck, upper deck, airlocks and stair, the RAM, and the Science Dome. We were fortunate that MAU Crew Engineer Roberts cleaned Spirit and Curiosity rovers – scrubbing off the red mud by hand. We really appreciated that he took this on knowing he had to depart for Earth later that day. The MAU Crew was joined by a few of the MDRS Crew members for the better part of the afternoon to take down the MAU Station which is a series of portable structures – airlock, living quarters, crew activity / meal, and cooking area. Due to cycles of Mars soil freezing and thawing, the station required a great deal of regular maintenance and engineering support. We are grateful we are resourceful! Marufa Bhuiyan, MSc. and International Astrology Researcher joined me in cleaning the upper deck. The arrival of a beautiful new gas stove was a highlight for me as I was preparing to make pizza with the herbs form the Green Hab for a late lunch. As part of a multi-tasking habit from Earth, I let lunch preparation sit and accompanied the MDRS Assistant Director on the check-out walk through. I am pleased to report that the Station is ship shape. The rest of the afternoon was focused on packing up the MAU station into the UHaul, writing reports and completing science research studies.

Look Ahead Plan: This evening activities includes finishing reports, briefing the incoming crew and going to town for shared meal. The entire MDRS-MAU 220 Crew will depart will tomorrow at 04:00 to the Grand Junction Airport and other points on Earth.

Anomalies in work: None

Weather: Tonight, the temperature is predicted to be 0 degrees Celsius, falling to -8 overnight and rising to a daytime high of 2 degrees Celsius tomorrow. No perception predicted.

Crew Physical Status: All the Crew is in good health. Some are excited to return to Earth. For myself, I will never fully return there. It’s too important to let the space created to lapse into the blue.

EVA: None planned.

Reports to be filed:

Commander Report

Sol Summary
Photo Report
Operations Report
GreenHab Report

Support Requested: None. Thank you infinitely!