2022-2023 Field Season (#22)

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