2022-2023 Field Season (#22)

Crew 184 Daily Summary Report  06 Dec 2017

MDRS Daily Summary Report for Sol 5

Summary Title:  Continuing failures, schedule replans, and a successful EVA!

Mission Status:  We are still waiting for a nominal morning!  To fix yesterday’s bandwidth problems we powered off all devices in the HAB, we then connected our ‘internet’ laptop to the modem and watched 100MB of bandwidth disappear in ~ 5 minutes.  We concluded there was a background process of some sort operating on that computer as no known programs were running.  We were able to fix this issue by swapping out this laptop and powering down the fault one.  Communication restored!

We exulted in this victory for approximately 10 minutes, then noticed that our generator had failed again and we were back to a powerdown configuration.  Our SOC was holding at 47%, but it was again clear that we were operating with a degraded power system.  Communication with Mission Control has tentatively identified the problem as due to a ‘summer fuel’ blend which has been noted before, which is separate from the oil leak we observed earlier.  The generator will likely continue to be faulty for the next few days until we can procure a ‘winter’ blend.  Winters on Mars can be tough!.  We are continuing to conserve power wherever possible and using the generator minimally to supplement the solar arrays when required.

We resumed nominal operations this afternoon with two primary activities

We decided to finish up the EVA that we left incomplete yesterday, going to Matryoshka Site #2 which is adjacent to the MDRS HAB.  Our EVA prep procedure continues to be challenging, but we are getting better.  We have allocated the best radios and headsets for EVA (recently delivered!) and placed them adjacent to the EVA prep room.  We have also pre-staged all EVA equipment (boots / gloves / first aid kid / emergency water supply / maps / etc . . . ) in the EVA room to minimize the chance that our prebreathe is interrupted by having to go out to the HAB to get supplies.  We have also started carrying backup radios with us since we have had to cut an EVA short due to radios running out of batteries.  The EVA training continues!

Once outside we successfully found samples from numerous geological strata in our target era and bagged them for later delivery and chemical analysis.  We had some excess time upon returning so we also took some of the PR images requested and will uplink them as part of the journalist report.

When the majority of the crew got back to the habitat we did an observatory training sessions where the crew astronomy gave a tutorial in observatory and telescope operation.  There’s something about being on Mars that gives observatory operations extra gravitas as you are already in the ‘space’ mindset.

Sol Activity Summary:

1.      Matryoshka EVA Site #2

2.      Observatory Training Session (no observing)

3.      HAB Cleaning

4.      Reports and general HAB maintenance / checks

5.      Food inventory transfer to excel

6.      Exercise

Look Ahead Plan:

1. Matryoshka EVA Site #3
2. Nerve Block Training
3. CBS News Visit (unconfirmed – request confirmation on whether media crew is coming from Mission Support)
4. Filming and Interviews
5. Solar Observation
6. Communication Experiment (Time Delay)
7. CPR Technique Training
8. Exercise / General HAB Maintenance

Anomalies in work:

1.      HAB Leak from under EVA door (per Mission Control leak is expected and has been present for months, presumed to be from Kitchen piping)

2.      Generator failure

3.      Internet bandwidth problem was resolved today.

Weather: Still cold (below freezing), slightly windy

Crew Physical Status: All crew in good physical health.

EVA: See above for EVA details

Reports to be filed:

Greenhab

Operations

EVA Request

Journalist

Astronomy

Sol Summary

Support Requested:

1.      Trash pickup from rear airlock

2.      Replacement ATV Fuel

3.      Additional dish soap

4.  Confirmation of whether media visits will occur

Crew 184 Sol Summary Report  05 Dec 2017

MDRS Sol Summary Report for Sol 4

Summary Title:  Our first failure and major replan

Mission Status:  Today was a hectic day with three major failures our
team dealt with.
1.    Internet – Between 8:30am and 9:30am 800MB of bandwidth was
utilized. It is unknown what caused this but likely culprit was a
device being left on and doing a software update in the background.
Internet communication was lost at this time.  These reports are being
delivered by Shannon today.
2.    Water – During our morning fill of the loft tank the pump
was non-functional.  Possible causes were quickly narrowed down to
either a frozen pipe due to the below freezing temperatures or a
clogged filter. Our team immediately switched to using bottled water
which we keep as an emergency reserve while we troubleshot the issue.
At 1pm we called Mission Control for advice who recommended we connect
the pipe heating system and wait till midday, this resolved the issue
around 3pm and water was restored to the HAB
3.    Power – During our morning check of SOC it was noted that
the generator was not running, having failed sometime during the
night, and that SOC was at 3%.  We immediately instituted a shutdown
of MDRS powered equipment to preserve what little power we had and
investigated the generator.  It was noted that a significant oil leak
had developed from the oil cap, upon tightening the cap the leak
stopped and the generator was restarted.  When returning to the
science dome it was observed that SOC was hovering around 10% and did
not appear to be charging.  After consultation with Mission Control it
was discovered that the generator was in idle due to the power system
not requesting it to go to full delivered power given the fact that
the solar array system was charging the battiers (however slowly) .
In addition the SOC was likely incorrect due to it being a calculated
value and us confusing it due to going off scale.  We will assess SOC
tonight after a full day in the sun and decide forward plan.

Our morning was mostly consumed with maintenance and troubleshooting,
we quickly discovered that when receiving failures our level of
knowledge of the systems was exhausted in how to troubleshoot,
recommend future crew get access to and study manuals for MDRS
equipment prior to stay.

In the afternoon when we got our facilities in a stable configuratrion
four members of our team went on our first Matryoshka EVA. We were
able to go to the Kissing Camel ridge and collect two samples, however
we were unable to go to the other site in URC South due to delays in
getting out since we had to fix our non-nominal systems.

The two sample we collected were to highlight interesting
geomorphological features to be used in outreach activities back in
Oxford. The strike and dip of the ridge component the first sample was
extracted from was also taken. The intention of sample collection and
strike and dip measurement is to determine whether satellite and
outcrop scale imagery data is reliable at predicting these.

Sol Activity Summary:
1.    Troubleshooting and EVA as discussed above
2.    Exercise
3.    Assembling of exercise equipment using martian dirt
(medicine ball complete!)
4.    HAB Cleaning
5.    Solar observation

Look Ahead Plan:
With internet down we are unable to contact our scheduling team.  We
will receive the schedule in the morning when internet bandwidth
restarts and go over it as a team to plan our day.

Anomalies in work:
1.    Yamaha 250 ATV #3 wheel deemed non-recoverable.  We have
parked it off to the side for mission support.  Photos of damage
attached.

Weather: Very cold!  It was below freezing for most of the day.

Crew Physical Status: All in good health.

EVA: Delayed due to non-nominal systems, so we are requesting the same
EVA from Sol 3 but just for site A (mound on URC South) to finish off
the sample collection. The plan and crew utilised will be the exact
same as today.

Reports to be file:
Greenhab
Operations
Astronomy
EVA Request
Journalist
Sol Summary

Support Requested:
Trash placed in the Rear Airlock for pickup.  Burnable trash on the
side with the box.  Non-burnable trash on the other side.