SOL 26: This Is Not the End.
04:20 PM: Last day in the station. The entire crew is dismantling the final experiments, tidying up the station, and cleaning the modules… Robin, Erin, and I went out for the last EVA of the mission, which was partly organized by students from Mirepoix, to take down the atmospheric instruments. Everything went as planned—if not better—since we managed to pack up and bring back all the instruments in less than an hour!
Once everything was stored away, we found ourselves in a different station. Suitcases were scattered across the floor, and Célyan asked everyone to return the sensors from the Orbital Architecture experiment, as we wouldn’t be wearing them today. This morning, Meddi and Somaya tried once again to get the SUPAEROMOON rover to move, but without success. Still, the little machine’s wheels had touched the ground of our very own "Mars."
We completed our final cognitive tests and last questionnaires. In less than an hour, at 5:00 PM, we will break the simulation. In less than an hour, we will be free to run through the Utah desert—no longer Mars—to breathe fresh air, to see each other’s faces without the glass visors of our EVA suits.
Of course, the mission is not over. We still have a lot of data to transmit to researchers, documents to write explaining our experiments, and some experiments are still ongoing! This mission has been a scientific experience that we hope will prove useful, but one thing I am sure of is that it has been an incredibly enriching human experience.
It’s time. It is 5:00 PM, the time to open the door leading back to Earth.
7:17 PM : We stepped out, we ran, then we walked, then we climbed a mountain we had been seeing in the distance. It feels good to be free, to go wherever we want, without the constraints of space or time, without the limitations of our rovers’ batteries or our spacesuits’ oxygen supply.
The mission is not over, because we expect results to emerge, because we intend to pass on our experience to the next crew, because we plan to take it even further.