Commander Report
11/20/2014
Paul Knightly
It was a very busy day at MDRS. We had our longest EVA to date at just over 3.5 hours and received a visiting film crew from Earth. The crew was from the French-German TV network Arte and filming for a documentary series called “Between Heaven and Earth.” They arrived around 1030 and we invited them
into the Hab where we got wired up and coordinated activities for the remainder of the day. We also conducted our third EVA which was an engineering and science EVA. Maintaining the buddy we system, we divided into two EVA teams with the engineering team staying near the Hab and the science team traversing to a waypoint some 400 meters due northeast of the Hab. The EVA was productive for all crew members involved, which today included Paul K and Paul S on the
science away team and Ian and Alexandre on the engineering team. Halfway through the EVA, our television host from Arte, Serge Brunier, suited up and joined the science away team and we introduced him to life on Mars and demonstrated to him some of the geological and biological
research activities we have been busy with this week. Mr. Brunier was impressed by the work that has been conducted at MDRS and it was a fantastic opportunity for outreach. The episode is expected to air sometime next year.
Post processing activities followed an early afternoon lunch and it was unanimous that despite challenges that may have been encountered during the EVA, everyone had a very productive day scientifically and all the results gathered today were very useful for all current projects at MDRS.Yesterday evening we had a movie night before bed and I’m anticipating an equally mellow evening tonight as we unwind from a busy, but quite exciting day.