Category: Journalist Report

Crew 227 Journalist Report 5 April 2022
Sol : 9
Name of the person filling the report : Sirga Drouet

To the Moon and beyond!

Yesterday evening on ground 8, a delicious Belgian dish revisited, small play of belote, evening discussion and small film not worth the trouble and finally the hypnosis session of Julien towards 2 am.
This morning, on the 9th day of our adventure, the wind was caressing the roof of our cabin and after a pancake breakfast, the EVA team left to get ready. The three people staying in the station as backup are Jean, Julie and myself, joined later by Audrey who will return earlier to prepare for the chirugical challenge that starts at 12 pm. The Moon mission is launched with the aim of using Cyril’s radar to study the dielectric properties of the ground, explore and use the drone if the external conditions allow it

Cheyenne tell me about your adventure after the radar mission on the way home 😉 :
Today’s EVA it was to the moon! After a while, we realized that we had missed the road on the left leading to it and that we were too far away ! So we went back on our steps. For my part, no worries, driving the rovers is a real pleasure ! Once arrived, we parked our vehicles and continued our exploration by foot. Soon, the brownish and reddish regolith of the Martian soil gave way to the more and more whitish and grayish lunar substrate. After having climbed a few hills and slopes, a magnificent landscape of plains and dunes with white tones was offered to us. What a privilege to discover so many stars during this interstellar expedition ! The wind was with us and it was sometimes difficult to hear each other through our radio communications. Nevertheless, we managed to take some pictures and videos. After enjoying the view one last time and collecting some soil, we headed back to the road. Just before returning, we climbed a small mountain, this time a Martian one. It was sporty and steep ! But once again, the sport was worth it : from the top, we had a breathtaking view of the valley and the MDRS. Can our comrades who stayed at the camp see us from here ? Once again, a few shots and we headed back to the mother house, it was already time to go back and in space timing is everything ! Hop hop hop, we were back to the rovers and 10 minutes later, in the pressurization SAS. It was a great EVA, one of the last ones considering our departure which is approaching day after day, but this deadline makes us enjoy these moments even more.

Thank you Cheyenne for this story !

On the way back, the anatomy and mechanics team fought outside for the place of the best surgeon. Last match for Cyril assistant and Ignacio operator. Unfortunately for the anatomy team, Audrey who was an operator fell several times like a turtle back on its shell… I might as well tell you : Ouch for the anatomy team. Well the mechanical team still used a wheelbarrow to compensate the weight of the space suits if they were on all fours on the ground. Very stressful fight in addition to the wind that tried to steal every object made of papers.
You should have seen the scene, a real musical : Audrey on her back not knowing how to get up, the boys sweating to puncture the leg and create a "Gruyère", Julie running after the sheet and the bags, it was only missing that the people remaining inside started to sing "Oh happy Day" and the movie was in the box…

After all these emotions we tasted a soup unknown to any Belgian sitting at the table. A cheese and potato soup ?! Accompanied by a bread with insects, I still don’t know which of these two foods is the most bizarre ^^".

This afternoon the wind blows stronger and stronger and since 4 pm we have no electricity… We are still orphans of power … no electricity means no more gas stove, no more water pump, no more heating. We still have a glass of water and a coffee for 8…
For the moment still no electricity it is 6.40pm.
If you are reading this Journalist Report it means that we are not dead of thirst.
We all hope you will read it.

Farewell. I’m just kidding, we’ll find a solution 😉

[Time is passing so fast] Journalist Report
Crew 227 Journalist Report 4 April 2022
Sol : 8
Name of the person filling the report : Sirga Drouet

Sol 8 of our life on Mars.
A cold night for the inhabitants of the Hab and a premature awakening by a gadget beeping like crazy every 5 seconds. I turned to my neighbor and quickly realized that I was going to have to get out of bed to turn off whatever had woken me up. However, I was lucky enough to be accompanied by the rising sun that pierced the red hills and gradually illuminated our community, a calm and silent moment (luckily no one was snoring). I learned in the morning that several people were awake and didn’t have the courage to turn off the sound that was roasting our poor ears, great I had been fooled like a rabbit !
The day looks hot without a cloud on the horizon and an EVA without rover for a game in exploration condition. The tension rises at the idea of this duel.

Team mechanics versus team "Others", we set off with Julie and the two teams in search of a flat spot on the heights of Mars to carry out the great challenge.
You have to realize the magnitude of this match : on the ground on all fours on the Martian sand, with our helmets on, it was impossible to get close to each other to make a good reduction of the shin, it was impossible to discuss orally and it was difficult to do so with walkie-talkies, otherwise it was a mess as far as communication was concerned, because we were all connected and we didn’t understand each other. It was mentally and physically tiring but we did our best and the fact that we had prepared beforehand as a team helped a lot. We know the steps and the difficult movements of each one which guides us in the manipulation. In the end, we did pretty well, less than 50 minutes of operation and we counted only one dead and the other patient will return to earth…
Thank God that Julie is still in good shape ^^.
We were in a beautiful place a few hundred meters from the station.
We had a sight on big full broken in the distance by mountains higher than skyscrapers. Once the game finished to have a 360 degrees view we climbed North Ridge a mound which overhangs the panorama and which is in front of the station. After a few feet slipping in the sand, deep breaths and a few drops of sweat we were on top ! A breathtaking view, all the reliefs of Mars in front of us, a range of colors, unknown stones and above all the smile on our happy and red faces. Fortunately we had good boots and no sandals, the steep descent could have turned into a sledding race on combination, instead we positioned ourselves on our boots to crouch so as not to lose our balance on the slope ! I admit it to you I smile to the image of this situation a little bit embarrassing and ridiculous but let us not take risks. Safety first !

I have an announcement to make ! Cyril’s experiment finally starts !!!! A 3D model in perspective and a superb drone shot of our EVA. Honestly, it looks like a drone from the Wall-e cartoon as its behavior fluctuates. It was complicated but after the rain the weather is not ?

This afternoon, back to the daily activities. The Anatomy team, since Audrey started her challenges, is dangerously catching up with the mechanical team in the surgery tournaments.
Let’s make a little tour of the Cheyenne plants. The radishes grow earlier than expected and grow with the days in the compost substrate but the Martian substrate does not seem to please them … They germinate slowly, we observe in some pot of radish and a microgreen the radicle. Tadam the culture takes more time but it works. I will keep you informed of their growth. It will be easy to guess when they will show their cotyledons Cheyenne will probably be jumping for joy everywhere.

On Audrey’s side the exposed bacteria seem to have a 100 to 1000 times lower growth rate than the unexposed bacteria. On the exposed AB side, some have no impact on their efficiency but others are significantly less efficient.
More news in a few days when the analysis will have progressed 😉
Julien for his part is starting to catch up on his analysis of the sleep patterns and is becoming more and more efficient at recognizing the different phases.

Tonight it’s applesauce, freeze-dried chicken and mashed potatoes with a touch of insects. The time passes so quickly, we leave the station in 5 days and it seems like we arrived only a few days ago. I feel like singing : Hey hey hey, I’m one vacation, every single day cause I love my occupation !
On that note, I’m going to prepare the meal right now

See you tomorrow!
Sirga

Crew 227 Journalist Report 3 April 2022
Sol : 7
Name of the person filling the report : Sirga Drouet

Today we got up early but slept late, for some of us, after a surprise game until 11 pm. Team mechanics against team the "Others" Ignacio against me the astronauts will be able to return on earth, good news even if Ignacio remains the best of the apprentice surgeons although we all evolve!

This morning breakfast of quality, good pancakes with syrup, bleuberries and even chocolate!
We ate in two seconds our good meal because a very precise goal and a mission para commando to realize was of setting.
Return to Tharsis canyon, to go as far as possible in three hours by counting the way in rover. We clearly made the fastest preparation of EVA since we are here. At 9:16 am sharp we were in front of the tricky canyon entrance. Euphorically we set off, plunging into what would turn into a wall of rock. The walk was fast, I admit it was clearly military for me with my little legs. We went two and a half times faster than the day before ! The team was composed of Julie, Jean, Cyril, me and Cheyenne. The easiest way to advance was to go along the ridge to have a better view.

We were higher and higher, we felt so ridiculous in front of these strata which are and will be there before and maybe after the humanity. A funny feeling, it pushes us to question ourselves on our place in this world and on our so small trace in the rocks in front of us. We stayed there a moment to contemplate from the top of the 40 meters the river dry in the bottom of the valley. Some shots of drone and in spite of the fact that we were in 2/3 of our objective it did not remain us enough time and the half-turn arrived.
To finish this canyon we would have to run at each negative drop, make a quick hello at the origin and run back without forgetting our 10 Kilograms of space suit. We are proud of what we have accomplished so far and maybe the origin of our goal will remain forever blank. An ideal to be reached like the utopia of making humanity live on Mars. But I am sure that the echoes of our hopes will plausibly solve terrestrial problems useful to our future.
The secret in this adventure is to not give up and despite the many failures to stay united and face the challenge.
The return journey was less sportive but the sun was shining and the thirst was felt. On the way back we got the antibiotics from Audrey who was exposed.

Once back, the routine : The decompression chamber, undress and eat. Today no insects of the day to take a break, everyone seems to be in heaven ahaha.
The afternoon activities started and Audrey’s first surgical match took place, against me, she did very well for a first.
Then a little manipulation of Audrey’s bacteria and Cheyenne’s plants are growing wonderfully !

During this time it was the church in the Hab to pray of Saint-Computer because an accident happened… We almost lost the computer of Ignacio because of an attack of coffee. We were three reconverted in monk while Father Cyril with his hands of electrical engineer handled the multimeter to try to find the cause of the murder. The machine was making big beeps, which is very worrying in the microscopic computer world… Finally, our prayers were partly heard and the only collateral damage was to remove the battery.
A good day passed, tonight card tournaments are on the program to blow.

Tharsis Canyon Journalist Report
Crew 227 Journalist Report 2 April 2022
Sol: 6
Name of the person filing the report: Sirga Drouet
Good evening everyone and welcome to a new adventure of the Tharsis Crew!

Yesterday night after freeze-dried vegetable spaghetti, a discussion about a fun nickname: TCC, Tharsis Cool Crew (an abbreviation that reminds me of the earth), a belote game between girls and the boys at the dishes (a very 2022 situation), Julien hypnotized us!

He placed himself in the community while we were all snuggled up in our bed. Then he started his declamation which put us in a state of drowsiness. His voice was more and more distant and Ignacio was snoring more and more loudly, an indication that Julien had done his session well. I promise I didn’t push Ignacio from the room 😉

Today was a very exciting day! Cheyenne, me, Ignacio, Julien, and Audrey had the quest to find the big canyon I told you about on Sol 2. The one we want to call Tharsis canyon. This time all the elements are in our favor. We drink a big glass of water, put on our space suits, and went into the airlock of decompression.

This moment is always long… Especially on the return when we are hungry! In short, we are in the airlock we go out, we put on our rovers and zouuu we left towards the big exploration!

We had a little difficulty finding the entrance of the canyon but after a catch of height to have a better vision of the zone we quickly located the furrows that the river dug through the thousands of years.

Wow, it is there I said to myself! We left with a decided step towards the cut rocks, with the adventure companions, we left towards the horizon! After a good hour of walk, we were still at the end of a full with some rocks on the edges of the dry bed of the river but still no trace of the big walls of the canyon which we had seen in the distance… However, we walked fast and determined steps!

We thus took the decision to go up and to skirt the crest and further, to jump over the small cracks, to skirt again, and then PAF the moment so much awaited we were all at the top of the canyon. In front of us was an audience of rocks that jostled for a place in the precipice. We were there, very small to look at this spectacle which seemed to us petrified and yet very alive.

Then suddenly Julien (the timekeeper) said to us: guys it remains 60min to return to the rovers whereas we took 1h20 to arrive until here! Alalalala the return was sporting!

We were like in a movie to run to throw the bags, to encourage everybody, to cut the path of the outward journey to optimize the return, a movie I tell you! Finally, we arrived in time to be able to return to the Hab without overheating the rovers and remain careful on the return.

On our way back, like explorers, we explained our adventure to those who stayed in the Hab, we pointed out on the map the path we had taken and how far we had gone in the canyon. Except that after the debate we realized that well, in fact not so far as that! We made 1/3 of the canyon, it is already a feat for tracking! The EVA of tomorrow is planned to be military to beat the score of today, we shall also make a 3D mapping with the drone for the experience of Cyril (we cross the fingers so that it works).

At 4 pm we allowed ourselves a little Saturday madness to celebrate the birthday of Jean (a little late). We ate a brownie, everybody was in the angels, a real delight!
The fact of not having access to the outside world brings us very close, we spend hours talking and laughing without seeing the time pass.

I forgot to specify that yesterday evening Ignacio took us with the telescope a superb picture, between the fails, the nebula Cat eye. Julien and Ignacio planted some plants which point to the end of their nose, we hope to be able to eat them to feel again the taste of the fresh.

This evening in the program delights I foresee us a gratin with insects mmmh!

We think hard to the earth, Spotify did not follow us on Mars it did not follow the crew and I find myself to be the DJ of the orphans of the music.

We are living an incredible experience and we are at half of our life on Mars. We still have a lot to learn but I’m sure we’ll come back grown-up, with a head full of achievements.

Sunny day on the Hab – Journalist Report
Crew 227 Journalist Report 1st April 2022
Sol: 5
Name of the person filling the report : Sirga Drouet

Dear earthling, this is the Journalist Report from Sol 5 on Mars!

Last night before going to sleep Julie had a little scare! Julien, the clever one, put a creepy doll’s head in her room as a joke ! She turned on her lamp and jumped as Julien shouted : April fools!!!! Good old Juju. We start to feel what it implies to be alone but in correspondence with the Cape Comm to ensure us an optimal safety. Being far from everyone is sometimes synonymous with a very bad satellite connection and constrains us in our window of contact with you, our planet…

Today the sun brought us some good news, Ignacio was able to use the Musk Solar Observatory. We couldn’t hear each other anymore, he was so happy and enthusiastic to see our star. After breakfast, fortunately, he left faster than lightning!

So Ignacio, how does it feel to see the sun so close?
Ignacio : At first I knew it was the sun, I saw a red dot. I thought I was looking in the wrong place, but after a quick reflection and a better adjustment, TADAM the sun in all its splendor!

And what can you see on the sun?
Ignacio : Today I saw the chromosphere that corresponds to the "surface" of the sun and the prominence that are gases ejected into space. It’s quite incredible to be able to observe this live!

On our side, we took the time to clean the Hab and to do some stretching for some of us in order to stay in shape

This noon I had a surprise! Most of the team preferred the insect meal, an omelette ! Amazing, real pioneers!

This afternoon Julie also concocted a surprise for us, maybe to get back at Julien! A surgery battle that was not in our planning. The goal : to be in the stress of the unexpected. Julien against Cyril. However, despite the additional stress, both teams improved. I am happy to announce that none of the patients died! Youhouuuu ! Apparently Julien did better than Cyril but we won’t go into that because they are already arguing about who did better than the other. Ahh the boys and the competition…

We begin to enter in a small routine but every day is always different, we learn to tame our environment.

Everyone is doing well, it’s not today that a mutiny or a group problem could happen. We all love each other very much, how sweet ! I would still like to kick Ignacio if he starts snoring near my ear again it might be for tonight! I feel that if I do that I am going to be scolded by Julien because I risk disturbing the sleep of my room neighbor… Besides tonight we are hypnotized, I am excited to see Julien’s power!

See you tomorrow!
Sirga !

Crew 227 Journalist Report 29th March 2022
Sol: 2
Name of the person filling the report : Sirga Drouet

Stormy Day

Good evening dear Earthlings ! Here are the pioneers of Mars.

Last night the atmosphere was wild, so much conversation was going on. We were discussing the organization, our discoveries, our feelings, our needs, in short our new life that has just begun. With all this talk, we were so excited about exploring that we decided to visit a big canyon that we could see on a map made by our predecessors but not yet visited by man ; so we would be the first to walk in this place !!!! Wow you understood it is a super motivating activity!

We then let ourselves be manipulated by the agile hands of Julien to put a polysomnograph on us which analyzes our sleep. Cyril, me, Cheyenne and Ignacio are his "funny guinea pigs" because we look like sausages every night because of a net that we have to put on our head to hold the electrodes. The only thing that woke us up in the middle of the night is the bread machine after judgment, its sentence is to send it to the science dome for sure.

However, with our big dreams of exploration we perhaps forgot the fact that the wind was always present and that this morning by waking up big clouds full of water were waiting for us… Moreover our weather forecast reminded us that going out in EVA was a false good idea because of the risks of showers…
No problem, we are going to go ahead with our planning and to advance in the experiments to realize in the station.

So after a good breakfast in my way, Julie trained us for the theoretical and practical parts on her enriching experience which consists in teaching us how to put an external fixator on an open fracture of the tibia bone.

After putting on a scarf, we were divided into teams of two to play matches between teams to evaluate our speed of learning. In the afternoon the first match started with the team "others" Sirga-Jean against the team "anatomy" Audrey-Julien then Sirga-Jean against Cyril-Ignacio (team "mechanics").

To make a long story short, repairing an open bill on a leg requires good muscular arms, it’s crazy how muscles have strength even on a synthetic leg. I won’t tell you what a mess it was, but in any case, the patients finally died… Oops, it’s not today that we’ll be able to save our astronaut friends in space. Fortunately we have two weeks on Mars to learn and Julie is in great shape to keep us alive in case of problems.

Before his game Cyril calibrated his radar to be able to use it during the next EVAs with his antenna that he put on the Spirit rover yesterday.
Ignacio started to repair some broken objects with his 3D printer, a guaranteed quality part.

On his side Cheyenne spent all day among his plants to put them in pots and start to observe their growths in Martian substrate collected yesterday too.
As I write this I am listening to Troubleman by Electric Guest which makes me think of all the things we are learning, especially through our mistakes and the fact that our morale is at its highest to continue to discover this world.

I would like to mention a detail that happened during the last surgery match : A storm passed over our Hab and the landscape was completely transformed!
It was a mixture of an almost black and threatening sky streaked by lightning and buzzing with thunder, then the sun came to caress the mountains giving them a peaceful face while the storm continued to growl, a strange mixture…
Good news tomorrow it is the good one ! We leave in expedition (except if the storm and the wind decide to turn back). We shall go to deposit the bacteria of Audrey in the desert then we shall go to explore youhouuu!
We can wait for tomorrow and our day filled with sensations calms down little by little. Tonight the bread machine leaves us and that’s better! We will be very happy to be just in the company of our polysomnographers.

See you soon for the continuation of our great epic!

Crew 227 Journalist Report 30th March 2022
Sol: 3
Name of the person filing the report: Sirga Drouet
Sol 3 of the Tharsis mission!

Yesterday evening was a big tortilla feast thanks to Julien and Julie, the Juju, a small dedication to Ignacio for the perfect cooking, we enjoyed ourselves!

That evening we told each other anecdotes of our family trip. Small wink to our close relations: you made us laugh! Between Cheyenne who wanted to dive with her dad and Audrey who made a photo in China with a general of the army! Attention now we know your family secrets hehe! Then again the installation of polysomnographs (thank you CIDELEC), so this morning it was the sausages party in the community.

Everything passes so quickly we do not see the days passed, finally what reminds us of the notion of the time is the meals, especially the dinner which leads us to the moment to go to sleep! We went to bed at 1 am last night and we got up ready to start the day after 6 hours of sleep… Okay we abuse, we promise to try to come back from the mission without looking like aliens (what if we are on Mars? Are we aliens for you? Mmmh I let you choose 😉 ).

After a breakfast, which turned on the subject of the number of petals of cereals which we could put in our bowl per day, the surgical matches took again! Team mechanics against team anatomy for the moment the team mechanics stand out from all the teams! But we have more than one trick up our sleeve, we’ll end up knowing how to repair a fracture! In the end, our primary instinct gathered us around the lunch.

A loaf of good homemade bread with a touch of me to allow us to save flour. Bugs! To my surprise, everyone found the bread delicious! I don’t know if it’s because we are hungry all the time with all the activities or if we are just weird? Anyway, now that everybody likes this bread we’re going to eat it always with crushed flour worms ;-). I present you the brand new dish from the 5-star kitchen of Mars the Bugs’ Bread

And the adventure on the ground of Mars in all that you may ask?!

The 5 lucky ones to go on a mission are Audrey, Ignacio, Julie, Jean, and Julien.

Their mission, change Cyril’s antenna from Spirit and put Audrey’s bacteria in Martian exposure. The poor things are all scorching like crayfish hanging on a stone in front of the science dome. We can say hello to them from the window. For the antenna, the EVA team put the rover in front of the science dome while Cyril showed them exactly what to do. The thin team then left to explore the North Ridge area. RIP me Cyril and Cheyenne who have for super mission of the afternoon, the dishes…

However, being more than three in the station was good for us, it was calmer and after the last few days of being active at 200% without respite, slowing down is necessary for our bodies. This doesn’t mean that we did nothing! I accompanied Cheyenne for her sunshine and temperature measurements around her plants in different parts of the station. It is currently 42 degrees Celsius in the GreenHab (yes, we can use it to put Cheyenne’s seedlings). The time passed quickly and the adventurous team came back with a lot of discoveries to tell.

Small summary by Ignacio: After two days in the Hab this exit was saved, with the sun in the full, the soft sound of the voices on the headphones, according to him this expedition changed him deeply on his perception of the world and of himself. Finally, who is he? Olalala, what a poet! Nah I’m just kidding he’s not that poetic he just found this exit great, I wanted to add some romance but lost with him! Wait Ignacio may not be a poet but he is one hell of a 3D printer genius! Thanks to him we can use our gas stove without risking an explosion! A piece of quality and design, the dream of all gas stoves. Tonight we plan a Belgian dish, Belgian fries yeah!

At the moment we are in full medical visit and apparently, I do not breathe enough… Probably because tomorrow our revenge will sound and that I am super happy. I’m going to EVA with the kids who stayed in the station with me today!

On this, ciao!

See you tomorrow,
Sirga

Sol 18 – End clap

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

That’s it, we’re preparing to definitely leave this beautiful red planet… It is a mix of many different emotions: joy, sadness, the first impulses of nostalgia even if we have not yet taken off …

The day was dedicated to tidying up. First, for the trip outside, the morning outing was meant to dismount our external devices. In order, MegaAres, PurpleAir, LOAC, weather station, and HF antenna. It was a last EVA strangely filled with emotions: we carried out rotations throughout the mission to ensure their maintenance, for us it was inked in the routine; yet this morning we removed everything and tomorrow we will no longer have this daily appointment. So, we took advantage of it, the weather was good, we took a few last photos in our suits… Our goodbyes to the Martian ground that we have been walking on for the last 3 weeks.

Then it was the time to clean the Hab, to prepare the field for the next crew who will take over on Sunday. Our personal and work affairs, the sports equipment… It is true that, at the end of these three weeks of mission, our stuff was a little scattered all over the Hab: we used to the maximum the space which was dedicated to us.

At each device dismounted, it was an opportunity for us to remember the moments we spent here. Experiments in the ScienceDome, the few remaining plantations in the GreenHab, the radio set up in the Lower Deck… Some activities went well during this journey, others did not work, sometimes we know the reasons, sometimes not… This is the game of sim. We will have the opportunity to go over all this once back on Earth, but whatever it is we are getting out of here happy with the mission as a whole, and the group is more united than ever by all these adventures: We have lived together on Mars for 3 weeks!

PS: To prove to you that the weather was good, take a look at today’s Sun’s picture taken by our astronomer Marine. The observation conditions were really nice: you can spot Sun flares on the surface!

[end]

Sol 16 – Another day at the office

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

Another intense day on Mars, the kind of day we will remember once we will be back on Earth.

The program: the last session of ultrasound medical surveillance for everyone, finishing up the geology work in Candor Chasma for Mathéo, Elena, Cerise, and I, repairing the HF radio transceiver… and others.

Definitely, the ultrasound experiment might be our favourite. If you are a subject, you just lie on a comfortable bed, and for the next half hour, until you become what we call “first operator”. This latter is the actual person experimenting. This person has the probe in one hand, and the phone screen with the EchoFinder app on the other.

As I described for you in Sol 2’s report, it is then like a “game”, and to win you have to make a great picture. In the crew, we almost take that as a way to challenge each other, and as you might know, Elena is always the most valuable player… And once you have checked all organs asked, measured your performance, and given your feedback on the protocol given by CNES, you are done.

You become “operator 2”, to assist operator 1’s performance measurement. And because it is finally a time to do experiments together, to talk while changing probes, to share a moment, it is always a great time.

As I said before, the crew went back in Candor Chasma, to complete documentation of the zone, which began yesterday. But, because it was the same kind of “sporty EVA” as the previous one, this one was performed by the crew members that stayed inside yesterday. We had much fewer difficulties to go to the points of interest, for the simple reason that we were wisely briefed by the Martianauts who went there, not to make the same mistakes. And more, we flew the PARROT drone several times, which allowed us to have a clear vision of our environment.

We loved this outing. Being an operator in such conditions is unique, especially when it goes well: our “laser gun”, the LIBS Z-903, worked perfectly. The weather was good, the colours were magical. Take a look at the drone shot of the day!

During the last few days, we had trouble making our antenna setup work. Our last problem was on the feed line, where a transformer decided not to deliver enough voltage for a reason we ignore. We received advice from the Toulouse radio club to solve the problem: using a car battery charger and a car battery (that we usually use for atmospheric experiments). And it worked! You might see that it looks way more “handcrafted” than before, but we safely wired it: Safety first, even before science.

It is interesting seeing us working now, we feel like living in “normality” but in fact, we do not. The sequence of activities throughout the days, the station maintenance, the experiments, the EVAs … All of this makes our daily life, and we almost do not question it… It is just when taking a step back on it that you realise concretely. We might have become real Martians!

Sol 15 – A new Era for geology

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

Today was a big day for the three adventurous martionauts that went on EVA. 5 hours was planned for Marine, Léa and Valentine. The longest so far!

To tell you more, they were even free of the usual sport session, in order to be in shape all morning long. And according to their sayings, and also their afternoon naps (not for all of them), it was useful! Especially since they reached the goal of the outing: finding sulphate deposit veins! If, like me, you did not know what it looks like, they brought you a picture of it present in the daily pictures!

They left the Hab an hour before the usual one: at 8 am, they first made some maintenance on our devices around the Hab, and then took two of the rovers (cleverly named Curiosity and Opportunity, two of the real Mars “geologists”), heading to North East. They stopped after half an hour driving, and then, searched for (not without any difficulty) the entrance of a place named Candor Chasma.

The EVA was planned in Candor Chasma because it is a place where we might easily observe Jurassic outcrops. It took place in the second part of the geology field study: now, the crew (to be honest, mainly Léa and Marine who are in charge of it) is focused on documenting the presence of Jurassic sulphate deposit in the region. We are not focused on the transition between the two geological eras anymore. It is good to see this experiment moving forward!

Hence, as planned, it was a sporty one, but it went well. They came back to the Hab with precious samples and a big hunger! Fortunately, Mathéo and I were expecting them with a huge dish of Bolognese pasta that we cooked! They told us the whole story, and we had a great lunch.

The afternoon was calmer than previous ones in the Hab, to allow the ones who needed it to rest a little. The “unlucky” ones had to perform human factors experiments, the others went through data analysis.

The event that woke up the atmosphere a little was a tasting of the famous “crêpes Bonne-Maman” made by Valentine. The crew enjoyed the acrobatic cooking as much as the tasting!

I asked my crewmates around me a new question:

What are your “small pleasures” here during this mission?

For Mathéo, cooking bread makes him proud each time he does it!

Léa appreciates very much eating his freshly cooked bread! Along with Cerise and Valentine, they pointed out the evenings after sending our reports, when we gather to discuss, to watch movies…

And, during our work, we all agreed with Cerise, on the fact that working in front of the desert in the Science Dome is something unique. We will miss seeing Mars through this window!