Author: jburk

Summary Title:  Getting back on routine (and our first EVA failure!).

Mission Status:

Today was a successful day and will hopefully  mark out the routine we will follow until the end of our mission.  The generator has been completely functional now for two days since our repairs over the weekend which is thankful news, our power problems seem to have abated themselves for the mission (though I may be jinxing myself. . . .).  In addition, the weather has been getting warmer which is a welcome relief and allows me to finally stop wearing my thermals, which is a welcome relief as they could sorely use a wash!

We resumed this week’s round of Matryoshka EVAs with a successful visit and sample collection to Site #5.  Just two more sites to go and we will have completed our most important EVA objective of our mission.  We managed to collect several soil and rock samples from what appeared to look like river channels. We saw shiny glinting on the hills too and found some shale like specimens for analysis. All in all a successful EVA! One thing that has come about is the hazard of the strong sunlight in your face reducing visibility, as there is no sun visor on the helmet and sunglasses are not recommended. Luckily it caused no issues on this EVA, but could potentially be dangerous if sunglasses are to remain forbidden and visors are not added to EVA helmets.

During the EVA return our EVA crew encountered a failure with the Deimos Rover.

Deimos left the HAB at SOC 100% and was driven for ~ 45 minutes to the site with no issues.

When returning from EVA site Deimos started experiencing significant mechanical drag that both lowered the achievable rover speed and increased battery drain.  This problem persisted for roughly 30 minutes until the Rover was able to return to base.  From the onset of the problem it was roughly steady until the turn was made off of cowdung road to return to the HAB.  At that time Rover performance precipitously dropped and was able to achieve little more than walking speed.  Steering was also noticed to be stiff during the return from EVA site.

The EVA crew reports that from a driving perspective it felt like the parking break was on, though visual inspection showed this was not actually the case.  The root cause of the issue was not determined though we will do an inspection during tomorrows EVA.  We suspect the issue may be due to debris in Deimos’s drive train.

At the end of the EVA Deimos was at 29% which is unusual given Deimos’s long range and is likely related to the experienced ‘drag’ when driving Deimos.

For the folks left behind today we were primarily occupied with Solar observation which showed numerous impressive features that made observing a treat.  The sun is waking up!  Hopefully it stays active for the next few days and into the next mission.

We are entering the period of our mission where our Martian Sleep Schedule has moved our days ‘out of phase’ with Earth normal.  Tonight we will be going to sleep at 2:40am and waking up at 10:40am.  We have been primarily occupying our nights with cleaning, Bricks, Anesthesia training, and general maintenance to prepare ourselves to fully utilize the next day’s daylight hours.  Our team has adjusted to the schedule well so far with crew taking naps as needed to stay on schedule.

Thanks for your help!

Sol Activity Summary:

1. Matryoshka EVA Site #5
2. ‘Bricks’ communication experiment
3. Solar Observation
4. Exercise
5. General HAB Cleaning / Maintenance / Reports
6. EVA Suit Inspection / Maintenance

Look Ahead Plan:

1. Matryoshka EVA Site #6
2. ‘Bricks’ communication experiment
3. Solar Observation
4. Anesthesia Experiment Runs
5. Exercise
6. General HAB Cleaning / Maintenance / Reports
7. Deimos Troubleshooting

Anomalies in work:

1.    HAB Leak from under EVA door (not noticeable today)

2.  Power System Misconfiguration ongoing.

3.  Deimos Rover (see above)

Weather: Mild

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good physical health.

EVA: See Above

Reports to be filed:

Greenhab

Operations

EVA Request

Sol Summary

Journalist

Astronomy

HSO

Support Requested:

1.    ATV Fuel (we are empty)

2.  Burnable / Non Burnable Trash Pickup from Rear Airlock

3.  Permission to replant seedlings into individual planters so herbs have clean soil.  See Greenhab Report for details.

4.  We have an extra CO detector that is marked ‘For Greenhab’.  The current detector in Greenhab is both a Smoke Alarm / CO Sensor.  Please advise whether you would like us to install a redundant CO Sensor in the Greenhab or return it to the HAB and mark it as a replacement part.

5.     Food Re-Supply

1. 1. 1 Box Raisin Bran
   2. 1 Box Powdered Milk
   3. 24 packs Instant Ramen
   4. 3 Boxes Pasta (any type)
   5. 2 Box Granola Bars
   6. 1 Box Saltine Cracker
   7. 1 Box Cracker (any type)
   8. 1 Box Hot Chocolate
   9. 1 Box Red Lobster Biscuits
   10. 1 Box Earl Grey Tea
   11. 1 Pack Chocolate Chips
   12. 1 Pack Tortillas
   13. 1 Pack Sour Cream\
   14. 1 Can SPAM
   15. 2 Can Chicken
   16. 1 Can Strawberries
   17. 1 Box Granola
   18. 1 Bottle Soy Sauce

Summary Title:  A nominal day!

Mission Status:

Today has been a thankfully nominal day!  Due to our error with comm’s yesterday and not getting our EVA request in on time we stayed at MDRS and concentrated on catching up on HAB maintenance and other activities that have fallen by the wayside in the last few days.

Today we completed our crew training on our ultrasound machine, which enables us to complete our practice runs with the Astronaut trainer developed by Dr. Sczepaniak in the next few days.

We were informed of some likely solar activity by our friendly neighborhood astronomer which led us to perform some highly anticipated solar observation this afternoon.  While we could not detect any prominence we did detect sunspots for the first time.  We are hoping the sun continues in this period of high activity and future solar observation yields some rewarding images.

We continued with our communication experiment and have noticed significant improvement among the crew in terms of numbers of errors and completion times in our building tasks.  We have assembled a lesson’s learned list of communication tips to allow quick and efficient communication among various types of time delay.  We will continue this experiment in various permutations until our mission ends, and then expect to hand over our experiment materials to make this a permanent installation at MDRS that crews can participate in as desired.

We also completed our CPR techniques experiment runs on all crew, analyzing the various ways that more force than body weight can be utilized during a CPR medical emergency.  It was interesting that most crew actually utilized different techniques during this experiment run, with us comparing notes to identify the optimal method.

Our crew has returned to our exercise routine today with all exercise equipment completely assembled.  This has proven to be a crew favorite and we also intend to donate this equipment to MDRS.  We have assembled a stationary exercise bike and a series of medicine balls for weights exercises.

The remainder of the day was filled with HAB maintenance, static water tank transfer, cleaning, some much needed love for our friendly plants in the Greenhab, and assembly of equipment delivered by Mission Control.  We are excited to finish out our mission and eager to get back out into the Martian environment with our 5th Matryoshka experiment site tomorrow.

Thanks for your assistance!

Sol Activity Summary:

1. Matryoshka EVA Site #5
2. ‘Bricks’ communication experiment
3. Solar Observation
4. CPR Techniques
5. Exercise
6. General HAB Cleaning / Maintenance / Reports
7. EVA Suit Inspection / Maintenance
8. Washvac Assembly
9. Power system monitoring
10. Greenhab Planting
11. Anesthesia Ultrasound Training
12. Static Water Tank Transfer

Look Ahead Plan:

1. Matryoshka EVA Site #5
2. ‘Bricks’ communication experiment
3. Solar Observation
4. CPR Techniques
5. Exercise
6. General HAB Cleaning / Maintenance / Reports

Anomalies in work:

1.      HAB Leak from under EVA door continuing (per Mission Control leak is expected and has been present for months, presumed to be from Kitchen piping)

2.  Power System Misconfiguration ongoing.  Generator turned off ~ 10am.  SOC stayed close to 100% all day long.

3.  EVA Suit Malfunctions – See Operations Report

Weather: Cold, clear

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good physical health.

EVA: N/A

Reports to be filed:

Greenhab

Operations

EVA Request

Sol Summary

Journalist

Astronomy

Support Requested:

1.    ATV Fuel

2.  Burnable / Non Burnable Trash Pickup from Rear Airlock

3.  Permission to replant seedlings into individual planters so herbs have clean soil.  See Greenhab Report for details.

4.  We have an extra CO detector that is marked ‘For Greenhab’.  The current detector in Greenhab is both a Smoke Alarm / CO Sensor.  Please advise whether you would like us to install a redundant CO Sensor in the Greenhab or return it to the HAB and mark it as a replacement part.

3.     Food Re-Supply

1. 1. 1 Box Raisin Bran
   2. 1 Box Powdered Milk
   3. 24 packs Instant Ramen
   4. 3 Boxes Pasta (any type)
   5. 2 Box Granola Bars
   6. 1 Box Saltine Cracker
   7. 1 Box Cracker (any type)
   8. 1 Box Hot Chocolate
   9. 1 Box Red Lobster Biscuits
   10. 1 Box Earl Grey Tea
   11. 1 Pack Chocolate Chips
   12. 1 Pack Tortillas
   13. 1 Pack Sour Cream\
   14. 1 Can SPAM
   15. 2 Can Chicken