2022-2023 Field Season (#22)

Journalist Report – Sol 11 03/01/18

Further, Faster, Stronger

For the second time of the simulation, there has not been a sport session this morning. But this time, that was not because we reached a break day. No, the team just was not able to wake up early enough. Yet we did not stay in bed until noon either! We indeed had an EVA planned at 9am, so we had to hurry! For the first time, neither Louis nor Victoria would be a member of the EVA. Laurent, Benoît and Jérémy made up the team, while I was their leader. We made our usual at our instruments to change the LOAC batteries. However, we realized that the batteries of the MegaARES were also at a dangerously low level. We had to go back to the Hab to ask Gabriel whether we had to change it too, yet he declined, as he believed that could be done tomorrow. We could then go on with the core of our EVA: exploration.

As we were going further north than we ever went before, we decided to ride the ATV: one of each one of us! These ones are indeed way faster and more pleasant to drive than rovers. As we did not bring any heavy material on EVA, there was thus no issue not having rovers. After a 20 minutes’ drive, quite longer than we were used to, we finally arrived to the canyon we aimed to visit today. This canyon was a bit special: he was divided in several stratums under the one we parked the ATV on. The entry of the canyon was decorated by a display panel about dinosaurs, whose fossils are likely to be found here. Not the most Martian of the things we have seen here, but it is yet quite cool to know that! We then tried to enter the first level of the canyon: it has been a bit hard to find a way down at first, but after some researches we finally discovered an easy one. This small trip is the canyon was really nice, even though it revealed to be tiring! We found some small caves where Benoît and I could take a break in, while Jérémy seemed to have borrowed Benoîts lure for small beautiful stones. Once we completed our trip to the depths of the canyon, it was almost time to ride our ATV back to the Hab!

The return trip was outstanding. To be able to drive a lonely vehicle in such a beautiful landscape, the sensation of the ATV rolling over rocks, everything was delightful. But this moment could not last forever, and the Hab quickly appeared in our eyesight, ready to welcome us. Or at least, that is what we thought. We indeed got no response from the Hab: Gabriel, today’s HabCom, remained silent. 10 minutes later, we decided to go back to the instruments to get the empty batteries we left there, not to be cluttered on our ATV. But as we came back, Gabriel finally responded! Yet, it was to ask us to go back where we came from, and turn off the MegaARES… This was however useless, as the MegaARES was already shut down because of the low battery. Gabriel was by the way worth some derogatory remarks because of this meaningless return trip. Remarks we finally regretted when we discovered that our communication issues were due to the walkie-talkies, which stopped functioning.

Our today session of KTNE was quite less successful than the previous one, especially for Benoît and Louis, which were not able to find a specific word in a list of 25 in 3 minutes, and they had several difficulties counting up to 4, which led to some loud funny shouting matches. And today was also the day I could (finally!) take my first shower! I also was able to beat the best score of the crew, going down to 1.2 gallons for my shower. It is hard to say that we had almost lost the habit to smell nice here. This shower was yet really pleasant, and my hair is at last not standing anymore on its own!

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist

Hello CapCom !

Journalist report – Sol 10

Prepared by : Alexandre Martin (Crew Journalist) – 28 feb 2018

Here is my report of the day.

Best.

Journalist report, 02/28/18: Already mid-rotation!

Today is already our 10th day of mission, which means we are overpassing its half. Altogether, this pivotal day has been rather quiet. No EVA was indeed planned for today. After our daily sport, most of the crew went to the GreenHab in order to replace the tarp, which protects plants from the sun, as it was turned in the wrong direction. A task which was rather hard to achieve: the temperature inside the GreenHab is indeed 100°F in order to preserve plants health, sweating the team. In the late morning, both teams succeeded in each situation of KTNE, which seems to become too easy for us. Jérémy had yet less success in his own experiment: he suffered web connection issues, and Benoît could thus not drive the rover. While Louis and Victoria started an additional sport session, making the team question their sanity, Benoît and Gabriel wanted to live a new culinary experience and decided to mix bread dough with food coloring. The obvious result: bread sharing his color with Smurfs. A black market of food is also starting to be organized inside the Hab, through

As half of the mission is already over, it is time to draw a first review of our experience. Our daily life has indeed suffered a dramatic change since our arrival at the station! To take a daily shower: over. To do the dishes after each meal: over. To eat lavishly: over. To take a break outside anytime we want: over. To be able to contact our close relatives anytime we want: over. To be able to be totally isolated: over. We had to become used to any of these situations! Everyone seems to have its own hardest lack to deal with, yet the separation from friends and family is often he hardest, and then comes the food, then the lack of fresh air. We learned to save almost anything: from food to water, from our oxygen during EVA to our energy during sport session. For the moment, no one has for example taken more than one shower! And those were not the kind of shower that is usually had: we keep the falling water in a large basin to use it to rinse ourselves! The food rationing might be the hardest for the team: even each member of the team was near to come undone since the beginning of the mission! However, only 9 days of mission are remaining, it is up to us to continue to work along the same lines!

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist.

Journalist report, 02/27/18: In case of emergency

As today’s EVA was planned on the afternoon, our sport session was delayed by one hour. Yet I obviously forgot to change my alarm clock, and I was the only one to be woken up at 6.30am. Hopeless to get back to sleep, I decided to wait for our evil session: the 3 times 20 second mode was back today. However, it seems that the workout benefits to everybody. We indeed all beat our personal scores in nearly every exercise: Louis for example could do 70 push-ups, Jérémy was able to deliver 90 half-squats, while I was capable to do 85 lunges, all in 1 minute. Laurent even succeeded in making 104 head shakes, though real crunches would have been better. After around 10 days in the station, we are all getting in a better shape: each one lost about 2 to 3 pounds of fat!

The day was dedicated to emergency procedures. Our health and security officer Laurent prepared us a 2 hours briefing on the morning. He explained at first the good habits to have when one finds someone injured. What is the most important is to make a statement of the situation: if the place still can be dangerous, what the causes of the incident are, how the victim is behaving. Gabriel was the one to play the victim for a while: he was repeatedly placed in recovery position and was flipped over onto his back. After these global gestures, Laurent became more specific in his showing. We are not in a Martian simulation for nothing! In such environment, these gestures would indeed be mainly practiced through spacesuits… Some gestures are indeed becoming much more complex: in the case of a vertebrae issue, it would be impossible to maintain the head because of the helmet. Cardiac massage would be compromise, and even acknowledge if someone is breathing or not becomes a hard task. Finally, even repatriate someone to the station would be problematic: with our spacesuits, everyone is 20lbs heavier, and there is no solid hold on it.

Laurent was thus leader of today’s EVA, where he would be able to try these procedures on the outside in real conditions, along with Louis, Jérémy, Victoria, Gabriel, Benoît. Jérémy and I would be the only two to guard the fort. While Victoria, Gabriel and Benoît made a short detour to our instruments, in order to change the battery of the MegaARES, Louis and Laurent dealt with some small tasks around the Hab. While the other half of the team came back shortly after, they were ready to go on with the procedures. Victoria seemed to quite enjoy the recovery position, as she has often been in this situation. The team dealt with a lot of different situations and diagnosis, in order to cover a large amount of the injury possibilities that could one day happen into space. In the meantime, I served as HabCom for the team: I was their referent inside of the Hab, harvesting the data they give me about the resources of the station, such as water level, the state of our vehicles, etc. They finally came back into the Hab after only 2 hours, as they had completed everything they wanted to do.

Our evening was punctuated by our traditional KTNE session, which is becoming increasingly harder: instructions are now incomplete in each manual, and teammates have to be coordinated in order to be able to succeed. Gabriel also gave us the first ranking: Victoria and I are at the moment on the top, yet things will certainly change rapidly, as the hardest part is to come! Benoît also seems to be getting some issues dealing with food: while we split our remaining energy bars yesterday between the crew, he already ate almost half of them! It will be hard to keep going like this until the end of the mission!