2022-2023 Field Season (#22)

Crew 223 Journalist Report 05Mar2020
Author: Clément Plagne, Crew Journalist
Sol 6
Title: The Sound of Silence
A couple days ago on EVA, Marion unfortunately lost the use of her comms
headset, making her incapable of communicating with the rest of the
expedition by radio. Fortunately, thanks to the little nonverbal
communication we’d all learned to be more efficient, she was able to
pass over her EVA leader role and carry on the EVA normally. This
situation made Aurélien wonder: what if all our comms failed? EVAs limit
our senses drastically already, as the bulky suits limit our vision and
our movement. Even with the radios, it can prove difficult to coordinate
rovers on the road. As he came back in the Hab, he asked the question:
could we carry on an entire EVA without once using our radios?

Communication is the absolute centre of any EVA. We need to be clear
with the HabCom inside, who needs data on vehicles and water outside,
needs to give us permission to get in and out of various zones, and
requires updates to be given as we stop near the Hab to change batteries
on experiments set up within communication range. Between crewmembers on
EVA, communication is kept to a minimum, as radio chatter quickly
becomes impossible to understand if people try to talk over one another.
What remained, however, was of course the important communications:
whether everyone was feeling alright, what direction we need to be
going, or when the rovers need to stop or turn. A lot of crucial
communication goes through those radios, and imagining the ways to
eliminate the need for them and find alternatives is a tough task. While
we were outside yesterday morning with Blandine, Valentin and Florian,
Aurélien, Luc and Marion were thinking of a protocol to carry on a fully
silent EVA.

The final proposal, as given to us by Luc, was clever and felt fool
proof. Our five required minutes of airlock depressurisation would be
directed by the lights turning on or off by the HabCom on the other
side. The beginning measurements of data from the water tank and rovers
around the Hab were distributed among us, and would be relayed by Marion
using hand gestures to Valentin, our HabCom, looking through a window in
the Hab. He would respond similarly and give us the go or no go to take
the rovers outside. To ensure that no rover was left behind on the way,
the one in front would periodically stop and wait to be passed by the
other, and the dance would go on until reaching our destination. By
foot, most things can be done by mime – hand gestures were decided to
tell each other about our levels of fatigue and pain, making sure that
we can go back if someone is too uncomfortable.
The test was a complete success, and the EVA went on nominally without
one word spoken. Two years ago, the Supaéro MDRS crew drew up similar
plans on how to carry on an EVA in case of injury of a crewmember. These
are all possible events during an EVA, and we were glad to continue
doing research on similar themes. The communication between crews on a
year to year basis is one of the strengths of our missions, and this
gives us great hopes for even better experiments in the years to come.

The Science Dome was a lot less quiet though. Marion’s experiment on
foreign language communication is still running strong, and the English,
German and Spanish speaking are still working to build LEGO figures and
find new ways to be understood by the other. The puzzles are getting
rather hard, but what’s interesting is that the speaking pairs are
starting to develop their own slang to describe different pieces, and
much less time is wasted compared to the first attempts. Next week, a
different game: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. An asymmetric,
fast-paced bomb defusal game where one person sees puzzles, but only the
others have the manual to solve them. We’re all getting right in sync,
so this can only be exciting!

Crew 223 Journalist Report 06Mar2020
Author: Clément Plagne, Crew Journalist
Sol 5
Title: Grounded
Mars is a colourful place. Today on EVA, we explored the North Ridge, a
hilly area a few miles from the Station. The exploration was rather
athletic, and we once again saw all sorts of terrain as we trudged up
and down the steep sandy slopes. It felt like we walked for hours and
miles, despite the area being rather small and us being done in about an
hour. It probably was because the terrain changes so much – in a matter
of minutes we went from red hills to rocky areas to grey, Moon-like
zones. It’s also probably because the heavy suits make us slower. Most
certainly, it’s a bit of both. The other great news is that the more
comfortable suits that had failed on our first EVAs have been handsomely
fixed by Luc and Aurélien, and now work fully. Begone, back pains!
The ground out there is barren and lifeless. Still, there’s somewhere
not too far where the soil is life-giving and fruitful. The greenhouse
is in full bloom thanks to the good work of Valentin, our devoted
GreenHab officer. Aromatics, radishes, carrots and many others are busy
growing all day long and may at some point be food for us. But there’s
another, odder, thing growing in the warmth of the GreenHab. In glass
tanks lives a green, bubbly mass called spirulina. They’re algae that
shine by the low area needed to grow it, and the massive amounts of
nutrition value it creates with very little input. In those two tanks
that occupy very little of the water consumption and space of the
greenhouse, they have the potential of feeding us much better than all
the rest. It’s not as tasty as rosemary or basil, but some day we may be
forced to be as efficient as possible, and we’ll be happy to have it.
The Science Dome is also on the cutting edge of vegetal research. Today
was the official start of the Music for Plants experiment. It posits
that in harsh environments, sound waves may influence the durability of
plants – in other words, plants may enjoy music! To test this, Valentin
puts different batches of radishes and watercress under strong UV
lights, basically giving them sunburns, and tests different sounds on
the plants in the meantime, seeing how they evolve every day. With the
thin atmosphere of Mars, plants will inevitably be put under stress from
sunrays, so finding out how best to protect them and have an agriculture
on another planet is fundamental. In that same Science Dome, a tower
breathes. No soil this time: little pods on the tower are filled with a
special foam and fed with a nutritive liquid mix, and plants grow just
as well. Aeroponics and vertical culture are possible keys to
efficiently feed a colony on Mars, and working with the first
small-scale examples of these is a privilege for us.