Category: Journalist Report

Sol 14 – Happy Birthday Commander

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

Do you know someone who has already celebrated a birthday twice in a MDRS mission? Personally, I do!

The first time, it was three years ago, in 2019. Back then, Cerise was the Health and Safety Officer for Crew 206, another Supaero crew. Apparently, she loved this experience, so she decided to become Commander for Crew 263: here she is!

Our commander is now 25 years old; hence, she is our dean here! But, no needs to say, she has not taken a single wrinkle, and keeps her vivacity in her functions!

You might ask yourself, what is the purpose of a MDRS commander? This is someone with experience in analogs, someone for whom living a simulation is not unknown. In our case, she was very useful since we prepared for this mission. From how to mentally prepare to live a MDRS mission, to very practical questions: how warm it is in the MDRS, what clothes to take in our suitcase, what is not to forget…?

Moreover, she is responsible for the entire mission. On one hand, she keeps an eye on everyone’s experiments and stays updated about eventual unforeseen. On the other hand, a bit like Valentine the HSO does, she takes care of the team spirit, and of how everyone individually feels during the mission. So, she is almost everywhere.

This is why it was a hassle for us to organise her a birthday surprise. But we succeeded doing it! It took place at noon for lunch, during the dessert, around a delicious chocolate cake. In order to find her gift, she had to solve enigmas, like in a treasure hunt! To be honest, it was funny seeing her struggling a bit to resolve the first problems. Do not tell her, I would be in trouble, she is my commander…

It was a good moment of cohesion!

During the morning, we went on EVA (yes, I was in again) with Cerise and Mathéo, to test Augmented Reality mapping in an unknown canyon, named White Rock Canyon. Technically speaking, it was not really a success: it is hard to use Augmented Reality in very bright environments. At least, the weather was good and the place we discovered was wonderful.

Valentine was supposed to continue the HF propagation wave study, which is currently really interesting to perform thanks to the Sun activity. But this study is victim of bad luck: in the same time, outside the Hab one of the antennas telescopic arms collapsed, and inside the electrical transformer stopped working correctly… So, we are quite frustrated. We hope to put it back in order before our mission ends!

Otherwise, the whole crew performed human factors test, the ones provided by Université de Lorraine. We feel like we are losing efficiency on it throughout the mission, our attention might decrease… But it is still enough not to forget Cerise’s birthday!

Sol 13 – Sweet dreams

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

Against all odds, this morning’s weather has been wonderful. A nice and warm sun was waiting for us to wake up. The wind was slightly blowing, but nothing compared to what was announced. Mars is full of surprises.

So, we were allowed to go out and do the geology outing we could not do the day before, we even took advantage of it to realise maintenance on the HF antenna, change the outdoor batteries, and put the LOAC back on the field (which we took back in to protect it from the potential snowfall). So, at the end of the day, it was a big EVA, especially since the geology study needed us to go to a place named “White moon”, the furthest away we have gone so far. Hence, we had a great breakfast, carefully packed our needed material, and left the Hab for this morning adventure.

We were four, Cerise, Marine, Léa and I, heading to the North, and it went well. We were happy for the geology analysis we made there, and for the new landscapes we discovered…

It did not look like a “classic” Sunday of a Supaero Crew, it was more like a mix between a rest day and a work day (because we already took some rest the day before). Elena went through data analysis of the Teleop experiment (the one where martionauts teleoperate rovers in different positions) and cooked, Valentine tided up the lower deck and spent time drawing, Cerise went on EVA this morning, adjusted mission planning and knitted during the afternoon… To sum up, we worked in a relaxed atmosphere!

Most of us had a (needed) restorative night, the awakening was sweeter than the other days. And our numbers speak for themselves: we have a complete follow-up of our nights using Dreem headbands. These devices are really easy to use and are efficient in the context of our project! We just need to put them before going to sleep (like Cerise does on the photo), and they analyse our brain waves, breath rhythm, heartbeat, and even our detailed movements through the night (you would be impressed discovering how much a person moves during a night…)!

They allow us an access to durations and proportions of sleeping phases: deep, light, rapid eye movement (REM)… What we are interested in, is how all of this data evolves throughout a mission like ours, and also to keep an eye on it and take measures (reorganisation of the planning, relaxation exercises, naps…) if needed. Their data is thus very useful to efficiently keep our mission running.

You might ask yourself if it is possible to sleep correctly with it: do not worry, they are not very invasive, after two or three nights of accommodation (that we did weeks before the mission) you almost don’t feel it anymore. You can peacefully have sweet dreams!

Sol 12 – Bad weather, good times

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

The weather is definitely not kind to us, it pushes us to take some forced rest. Outside, the wind strongly blows, the rain and hail fall, and snow is to come during the night…

On one hand, technically speaking, it means taking the LOAC (aerosol meter) back in the Hab, because it might not survive under the snow, do maintenance on our HF antenna which is put to trouble by the wind, and hope the batteries are empty until tomorrow morning…

On the other hand, today’s experiments needed an outside intervention (geology, Augmented Reality, HF propagation…), more than just doing maintenance around the Hab, so we were stuck on these points.

So, we decided yesterday’s evening to “advance” our rest day, because of this, also because we did not want to lose efficiency in our upcoming work, we try thus to avoid tiredness: after the maintenance EVA, our afternoon would be declared empty, a time to breath, a time to relax.

We are finishing our second week on Mars, and even if some of the last days were not that intense, we lately feel more frequently tired. Maybe the weight of the simulation, maybe the repetitiveness of actions during the days, maybe the accumulation of little frustrations that are taken individually means almost nothing but when added it gets revealed to day light… Maybe a mix of all of that.

Even if we do not know exactly why, one of our strengths is to know how to overcome it: relax! And guess what, we are particularly good at it!

Our afternoon was thus focused on making us having a great time, cooking, chatting, living good! Some of us played games, others drew and painted, listened to music.

This looked like last Sunday, even if outside the bad weather strikes, inside the Hab it is bright and sunny!

Sol 11 – . – – . – – . – – . . . . . – !

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

Translate: « We made it! ». We made contact with the other Martian base (radio club in Toulouse, France)! In fact, we heard their signals but we are not sure if we were heard… The Sun has been nice to us for some days, and has charged the ionosphere enough to allow propagation!

The established protocol uses 3 modes of modulation (ways to transform our wave to send a message with it) with names that might scare some of you: FT8, CW and SSB. Here again, translate “digital mode” (only decodable with a computer), “MORSE mode”, and “voice mode”. On paper, we maximise our chances to make contact with the first one but we cannot send much information in each message, and the last one is the most uncertain but really facilitates communication. We tried two ranges of frequencies, around 21MHz and 28MHz. We don’t really know why, but today the MORSE mode has been the most efficient one, and the only one to work, and we finally heard something! Valentine and I were very excited while discovering our callsigns (KK7DAC and KK7DAE, lovely) followed by the REF 31 radio club one (F5KSE) in a message received near 9:17 am. Listen: 3 weeks ago, we took almost 13 hours travelling to MDRS from France, and now, at the speed of light, our waves took about a hundredth of a second to do the same course and deliver a message (without any intermediate, no satellite, no internet, no wire…). It is nice to see that the physics we learnt at school works effectively, in a big scale personal experiment! We hope to have the same (or even more) luck next Thursday, when we will try the contact for a last time, always using Zenith Antennes and ICOM devices.

In our propagation study we saw a very good one this morning, but the wind that appeared around noon significantly moved our antennas, and now we need to correctly set them again during an EVA… The weather cannot always be by our side…

On this subject, because of the rain probability, we could not do the geology EVA that was planned this morning. So, our day has had to be reorganised. Some of us took some rest, because here, we all have some moments of tiredness these days. Mathéo and Cerise decided to make cookies for the whole crew, which put us in a very good mood! Pictures to follow…

Yesterday, just when I finished my report, we had a strange exercise. Valentine set an emergency protocol exercise, inside the Hab. The situation was: there is a hole in the module, air is leaking out, the pressure is going low. How to react? We followed a protocol made by a middle school class in Toulouse, with which we have collaborated some months ago. No need to worry, it went (quite) well. We need to admit that during the first minute we were disorganised, but we managed to apply the protocol in time, and everyone was safe at the end. It was very interesting!

Sol 9 – A Hollywoodian movie

Author: Nicolas Wattelle

We are now at a point where the end of our mission is as far as its beginning. It is a strange feeling; this is one of the first times where we concretely think about the “end” of our more than a one-year-long project. But be reassured, it does mean that we do not keep up the good work!

Valentine is a clever strategist. Our HSO, for Health and Security Officer, takes care of us every day with sports sessions, proposing sophrology exercises, keeping an eye on our personal physiological data… She is like the guardian angel of each of us here, and it is great to have her by our side. But this morning, she organised an exercise of rescuing an injured astronaut, but in order to provide great data to analyse, she developed a scenario, Hollywood-worthy.

All began during yesterday’s eve, where she separately took each member of the crew to explain their role in testing a rescue protocol. She told everyone, except Cerise and Léa, that Elena would simulate a fall and an injury, and everyone one would have to abide by the protocol. The aim was to measure different parameters such as efficiency, time to secure the victim, and physiological data from Martianauts living the situation in EVA.

But in reality, she told the true scenario to Léa (who had to stay in the Hab during the EVA) and Cerise (who was Mathéo’s buddy during the EVA): Valentine herself, was meant to simulate being the victim before Elena did. Like this, the situation was more likely unforeseen for most of us and would be more realistic, while keeping the situation under control if something went wrong. In this case, Léa would have been able to inform Marine (today’s Habcom) and same with Cerise and Mathéo. It was very clever.

Everything went as planned, and after the protocol was applied, Valentine revealed the truth to the Marine, Elena, and Matheo who couldn’t be sure of what had really happened (even if Elena seemed to have understood quickly…). And we are now waiting for the data to be processed. This was a very exciting morning, and we had a great time talking about it at lunch!

For the work that has been done inside the station today, we made our second session of ultrasound with the Sonoscanner device and CNES protocol. Since last week, we received some adjustments from researchers, and it was useful. I think everyone improved their “image capture skills”, finding on average one organ more than last time.

On this subject, Elena is really impressive for an engineering student, she made twice a perfect shot! She may begin a conversion… The whole crew seems to appreciate this experiment and is really involved in giving their feedback and feelings about the protocol. This is a pleasure working in these conditions!

Sol 7 – From Interstellar to gravitropism experiment

Author : Nicolas Wattelle

Rest has been great (we all appreciated Christopher Nolan’s movie), now it is time to go back to efficient work! And I think we did: our schedule was not really full so we took advantage of it to prepare the next days, and to do what we usually have not the time to. The upcoming days are very exciting, this is partly due to the weather improvement, so we can broaden our EVA plans and make the mission go forward.

During the day, our focus was thus on planning, data processing and maintenance. For the planning, discussions have taken place during the whole early afternoon on the upper deck, and one of the great news is concerning the geological field study (mainly for Marine and Léa who are in charge of it) that might begin no later than tomorrow. Cerise, our commander, make a great job everyday to handle the tricky moving planning, dealing with all constraints (even the last-minute ones), and she always tries to satisfy each of us’ interests. She is a great commander (honestly, without any will to become the favourite).

In the middle of all this, two remarkable novelties: Elena has started the preparation of a spirulina culture; and Mathéo tried for the first time to pilot the drone from inside the Hab during an EVA. Léa who was Habcom at this moment, found this very useful to be able to follow the astronauts this way, it is much easier to understand their progression with this point of view (can you spot the astronauts on the today’s drone shot?).

Also, maintenance has been performed on the Solar Musk cupola, on the field mill (we had a mishap with it during the last EVA) and on the gravitropism experiment.

But what is gravitropism? Plants grow, we already know that, but in fact, they grow in response to stimuli. The stimulus can be various things: light, water presence, heat, fertilizer… In these cases, we respectively speak about phototropism, hydrotropism, thermotropism and chemotropism. Each plant is sensitive to these phenomena, like in a competition between the latter, and each plant is more or less responsive to a phenomenon. We know since the XVIIIth century that plants react to gravity. Gravitropism (and so gravity) is one of the reasons why roots go down and rods go up.

During our mission, and in collaboration with middle and high school students, we try to observe and disturb gravitropism. How do we do this? Thanks to inertia! We grow plants (ones with rapid growth, like lentils, beans, wheat…), on a turning wheel (almost 30 cm of radius), in order to make seeds feel centrifugal force. This way, when you add the contribution of this force to gravitational force, you obtain an inclined resultant (the force is not purely vertical anymore). And we might be able to see modifications in the growth. This is the idea of an historic experiment named “Knight’s Wheel”.

We had some trouble doing this experiment during our first week, but today, we took this experiment back to zero, hoping it will show interesting things before next weekend. Plus, we plan to experiment another unperformed protocol during our last week: what if we turn the wheel vertical? We are very curious to produce data on it!

PS: In addition, you can find in the daily pictures the M81 galaxy 11,74 million of light years away, observed by Marine. A picture like this might leave us dreamers, imagining a solar system similar to ours, and who knows… An inhabited planet like ours?

Sol 6 – Rest Day, simple day

Today was our first rest day. In fact, almost. We did two short EVAs, one for changing batteries for our outdoor devices, and another one for Mathéo to do his first session with the HoloLens Augmented Reality Experiment.

Otherwise, we spent the day together in the Hab, cleaning our place, cooking, speaking about our lives, and watching movies. Mars is starting to feel like home. We loved this time, and I think these kinds of days will be crucial for future long-term space missions and also our analog one which is filled by activities and experiments: breaks are essential. This first week has been really intense, and everyone here needs this time of rest, with simple things. Have the time to take a step back, to appreciate together, to think… And have a clear mind to begin the upcoming week!

And more, even if I have not spoken much of it the last few days, each time we spend “everyday life moments” together, each Crew member has the same unity feeling. Particularly when we sit all around a table to have lunch, to have a coffee, when we discuss on the sofa… I think our crew is deeply united, benevolent to the others, and this mission might create an indestructible link between us, because of our common work and because here we represent the daily human contact to each other, almost like a family. These moments have thus entirely their part of importance in a crewed mission.

For now, I will end this report here, because my crew mates are waiting for me to begin the movie Interstellar, and I do not want to miss living this moment! See you tomorrow!

Sol 5 – Allo… do you copy?

Author: Nicolas WATTELLE

Today we missed a rendezvous. In the context of the HF propagation study, we were supposed to contact a different “Martian base” in Toulouse. There, the radio club REF 31 should have gathered ham radios and pointed its antenna towards the MDRS.

Remember, on Sol 3 we set up the antenna near the Hab. During the following day, we set up the indoor setup: an ICOM transceiver, an antenna adapter, and a computer, linked to our triangle of steel. We did some tests, we received signals from around the planet, so we were hopeful for this morning’s session. But our experiment does not depend only on our work, another big factor named “The Sun” has also its part of the responsibility.

Mars (as Earth), has an atmosphere made of different layers. Among them, one, in particular, allows long-range propagation: the ionosphere. This layer is sensitive to Sun activity (solar storms, eruptions…), and can accumulate electrical charges. And if the total charge is significant, it permits HF waves reflections, and considerably increases the range of radiocommunications.

On Earth you might be able to perform intercontinental contacts, only using basic antennas and transceivers: a ground-ground communication without any satellite or other facility between the source and the receiver. It would be an interesting technique to use between ground stations on Mars!

So, we tried during the last months to set this experiment with the radio club (we will also perform beacon listening during the upcoming days to characterize the propagation following the propagation during the days), and today was the first attempt.

The protocol was one hour long, testing different modes of modulation, from the more reliable to the less reliable one. But the Sun might not have had enough activity the previous days: we faced a sad silence. We issued calls, but we received no answer. Have we been heard in France? We don’t know yet. But we will twice again before our mission ends, another case to follow!

That was the first experiment of the day for Valentine and me. For the rest of the crew the day was more classic: a maintenance EVA for the atmospheric experiment, adjusting the planning for the next week, repairs in the RAM…

For this one, I would like to thank a lot our Crew Engineer Matheo, who made a great job with the MegaAres antenna, tinkering with what we had in the RAM: it was out of service since the beginning of our mission, and we will be able to put it on the field by tomorrow! Thank you again Matheo (take a look at him and me, striking a pose in front of the “brand new” antenna!).

All the crew is now looking forward to tomorrow, our first “Martian rest day”! We can’t wait!

Sol 4 – Experiments filled day

Author : Nicolas WATTELLE

To be honest, today I felt a bit tired. The accumulation of the previous days and the double EVAs of the morning might be responsible for that.

First, two EVAs were planned during the day. One during the morning, one for the afternoon. But because of the snow melting, we had to condense the two outings in half a day: the first team was made by Matheo, Elena, Valentine and I. For the second, we just went out with Matheo. We tried for the first time, Matheo’s Search and Rescue protocol with drones. For him it was a bit stressful, because he was worrying for the possible unforeseen of piloting a drone in simulation conditions. While for Elena and I it was way more relaxing: we just had to walk in a predefined zone, and… “get lost”. The trial went well, Valentine and Matheo geotagged us very quickly, and we left the zone with some ideas to improve the protocol; it is promising.

In the afternoon, we were mostly all out the hab. Some of us were working on repairing the MegaAres antenna. It is interesting to tinker in a constrained area, with limited resources: “do what you can with what you have” is a sentence that seems like a chorus for Mathéo and I. Until now, we always managed to go further in this tricky repair, let’s hope it lasts! Valentine, Marine and Lea performed sessions of some of our human factor experiments: Teleop and other tests grouped in a software called “TAP”. TAP is definitively our daily nightmare. Briefly, imagine that you have to stay in front of your computer during an hour and a half, answering questions and doing cognitive exercises during which you test your focus in various ways. Sometimes you need to find correlations between shapes, colours, sounds… and “tap” on the right button as soon as you can. The first time it felt like challenging, almost like a game, but once you have done it several times it becomes really boring… But we are dedicated to our mission and we believe these data can help researchers. At the end of the day, it remains a subject that makes us laugh during meals so fair enough!

Today, in my tired person thoughts, I asked my teammates: How do you imagine the first crew walking on Mars?

That started a debate, even if everyone agreed on most subjects. Léa talked about the importance to send experts in widely various domains: engineering, medicine, geology… Marine and others hope that women and men would be equally represented, and more generally that it would be a fair selection. One question that was raised, is the one of the nationalities of the crew members. Does a country will succeed doing it alone, or would it be an international collaboration? Here at the MDRS, some are really convinced, and some are not. Only the future will tell us!

Sol 3 – Botanic emergency

Author : Nicolas WATTELLE

Definitely, a day without any complication on Mars, that may not exist…

Nevertheless, the day began quite well, I would even say that it was a very efficient work morning. One of the biggest challenges was setting up the antenna which we could not set the day before… The four martionauts chosen to do so were Valentine (she was wearing the Hololens during the whole outing today), Marine, Cerise and Léa. And, even if the task was not easy on paper, they appeared to manage very well: only one hour of the EVA was dedicated to achieve the tricky task.

This antenna is made of two big triangles (6 meters high), one in front of the other, directed towards France. It is called a Delta Loop, and ours was generously built by the radio club of Toulouse (REF 31), we were thus proud to see it set up in front of the Hab. We tested it, and the performances were encouraging, so that is good news for the future of our mission! A huge shout out to the four girls who made a perfect shot in EVA!

And then, the first unforeseen happened. Léa lost contact with her buddy beginning the last part of the EVA: her radio earphone and microphone had been unplugged while she was moving. So, writing on a paper to the three others, they decided to come back in the airlock, and the EVA was shortened. But this was nothing compared to what happened in the early afternoon…

We received a call from mission control. They discovered during the day that our GreenHab was compromised: white flies had contaminated the whole room so the future of all crops was at risk. The given instructions were clear: each Crew Member had to stop their activity and go to the GreenHab for a “big and fast gardening session”. We had to remove all the plants that were contaminated and assess the state of what can be salvaged and what was not.

First, we were worried for our disturbed schedule, but it turned out to be a great moment where we all had to work at the same place, at the same time. On top of this, the GreenHab atmosphere is always warm and really bright. Let’s say it, it was a pleasure doing it. But the result was quite sad: only few crops could had been saved, the GreenHab will not be usable for the next days. Currently, we do not know if we will be able to see fresh plants growing before the mission ends. The only kind we kept in our responsibility is the gravistropism experiment, which we are doing with school students back in France, which we moved to the ScienceDome.

At the end of the day, Elena the GreenHab officer had to write her last GreenHab report, and she will say goodbye to this special part of the station, that she had taken care of for the past four days…

Finally, we came back to our activities left uncompleted. And by the time I am writing these words, almost all the crew is helping to find ideas on how to cook the (big) harvest of the day: our lasts fresh vegetables of the mission.