2022-2023 Field Season (#22)

SOL 22: Our First Last Week

04:24 PM: The last week of our adventure begins normally, but we all know it will become increasingly busy as the days go by. This morning, Erin, Somaya, and Célyan went on an EVA to prepare the final phase of our photogrammetry experiment. This time, Meddi, Robin, and Quentin will look for the beacons instead of hiding them, since this morning’s EVA crew took care of that. They also handled mapping the western part of Kissing Camel Ridge, the new area we are going to explore! If everything goes well, tonight Quentin and Robin will study a 2D map of the area and conclude this part of the experiment.

The EVA crew from this morning isn’t the only one preparing for upcoming experiments: I’ve finished my last preparatory sketches for the discussion sessions about station layout. Now, all that’s left is to finalize the conclusions of our discussions. Quentin is working intensely this week while he can still observe the Sun thanks to the station’s observatory, although the day has been difficult and marked by power outages. Living with seven people consumes a lot of energy, and this kind of interruption is common at MDRS—we are prepared for it. On his part, Robin has finished assembling the SUPAEROMOON rover! We plan to take it out tomorrow for the first time. We have extravehicular activities (EVAs) scheduled almost every day, so we won’t miss the opportunity to test the rover on these occasions, although these EVAs are also planned for other reasons. Erin and he are now correcting the programs we use for the Core Data experiment, while Célyan is preparing small podcasts to answer questions from students at a school where the crew has done outreach.

The upcoming mornings promise to be well-filled because this week we will all try tele-operation using a virtual reality headset for the HUMANISE experiment. Fortunately, we have already concluded some of our experiments like Micropouss’. Meddi is now taking care of growing vegetables that will serve as provisions for future crews.

SOL 21: Save Didier!

06:30: PM This morning, the entire crew woke up a bit earlier than planned. Indeed, in Utah, we changed time! After an intense sports session organized by Célyan, the crew calmly has breakfast, and as everyone is about to start cleaning the station, we hear alerting cries: Quentin warns us that someone has taken Didier, our mascot! In fact, Célyan and he have organized an escape game throughout the station! After solving numerous puzzles and freeing Didier, we returned to our chores.

The second half of the day remained rather calm. We just had to continue with weekly and daily experiments, even if our schedule is more flexible. However, we still need to answer more questionnaires than usual. Some of us also have cognitive tests throughout the day, like Erin this morning, and reports or daily tasks to complete. If Meddi didn’t water the plants in the GreenHab, all our reserve of herbs would perish, Célyan still has to prepare our sports session for tomorrow, Robin is writing a report confirming that the station is operational, Somaya manages our retrospectives and I personally have to write today’s report and process all the crew’s photos. This weekend is also special because it precedes the last week we spend in the station, i.e., the one where we must uninstall many operational devices and complete ongoing experiments. We discussed at length how we should arrange the week and whether or not to continue certain experiments next week. Bad news: we will not benefit from the AMI experience during the mission, but we still have the last quarter of the mission to complete as many experiments beautifully.