Journalist Report
11/07/2014
Dario Parastesh
RESCUE TO THE SIXTH POWER!!
Good morning crew 142!! It's 7.34 a.m. and as every morning we're smelling the breakfast fragrance...
Today GreenHab Officer Carmel Johnston prepared eggs and hashbrown, mmm, not bad after have eaten granola, milk and orange
juice for many days!! Thanks Carmel...The smell and taste were great!!
Yesterday night was time for a lots of laughs as we played "Cards against humanity", I mean, I really have never had so much
entertainment in the last four months, probably one of the funniest games on Earth…oh...on Mars!!
We had a nice breakfast all together, which preliminarily started our daily discussion about the experiments currently running in the
HAB...and we discovered that first signs of sprouting and germinating are coming up. What can I say? Thank you Biologists! So while
we were reasoning in order to the next steps to be taken at MDRS, we were conscious that the new season has just taken its first
giant step. This is why we as a crew are pretty proud of the work carried out here.
And probably someone else is proud to have us in the HAB, because last night, the owner Mr. Jingle (a lovely mouse) came upstairs
to see everything was going in the right way, you're welcome Mr. Jingle...
Just after breakfast, the crew had a brief meeting on daily activities, and are continuing the current experiments being held both in
the GreenHouse and the BioLab. Cyprien and Christiane completed the Solar cooker, which is in about 15 hours the next experiment
the crew perform. They are trying to understand if boiling water without electricity will be another challenge for living on MARS.
Technically speaking, the point is that we are sure we can boil with green resources usage, in particular the sun.
Carmel and Vincent saw in the morning the growth of the seeds in the trays. It's time to give space to them and report exactly what
is happening inside there, tomorrow.
The morning time was an opportunity to move on studying how to control and trim the drone, which is predicted to fly in the next
two days mapping and recording the HAB area. It requires a little bit more tuning.
As the morning went on, at 11.00 a.m. Cyprien Verseux begun cooking the lunch as an EVA was to scheduled at 2.00 p.m.. Today a
hot soup, leaving us a pleasant warm sensation before a long 4-hours walking.
1.00 p.m. was time for me and commander Digby Tarvin to check the EVA equipment and then at 1.30 p.m. the EVA crew Digby T.,
Vincent C., Cyprien V. and Dario P. were on time to prepare for the outside excursion. At 2.00 p.m. the EVA group was in the airlock
room for the 5 minutes decompressuring and stepped into the external to start the mission. Today was time for the biologists
Vincent and Cyprien to continue sampling the terrain around the HAB and as the intentions were to reach more far locations, the
whole group used the ATVs.
The first checkpoint (NAD 27 coordinates E 0519130 N 4251800) called North Folk was the occasion to pick up some samples and
made some measures for Cyprien Versaux. Vincent helped him in this occasion. The group then moved to the next waypoint, but
suddenly something happened and Digby's ATV stopped. As the ATV was not recovering, and the Radio communication not
establishing with the HAB, the group decided to separate and Vincent C. and me were forced to return the first waypoint to re-
establish the communication with the HAB and get information about what to do. As the messages were not all clear, the last group
decided to go back to the HAB and swap Dario with Carmel in order to rescue Digby, Cyprien and the ATVs. So Vincent and Carmel
started at 4.50 p.m. on their ATVs resolute not to come back until all the team was safely at home. So what's the end of the story?
At 5.50 p.m. all the guys were on the way to home, and even if the dark of the night was coming up, the light of their ATVs was
shining bright in the cold desert...