129-CommandersReport

Commander Report

01/29/2015

Lucie Poulet

1 – Emergency fire training

2 – Loss of coms during EVA training

3 – EVA of the day: Loss of coms experiment

4 – Cyanobacteria experiment

5 – Astronomy

6 – Grow tent mounting

7 – PR and videos

8 – Other

Shower day!!! We decided to all take our shower on the same day and to wait until today. So

this is for all of us the first (2 min) shower of the mission. We are all very excited. To

celebrate and deserve it, we just completed a 30-min cross-fit workout.

1 – Emergency fire training

We started the day with a briefing and dry run of the emergency procedure in case of fire. It

all went very well, this crew is amazing. They found the fire and extinguished it and were all

suited in the airlock in less than 9 min!

2 – Loss of coms during EVA training

After that, we did an inside training for our executive officer's, Tiffany, experiment: setting

up geology equipment without coms. Tiffany and I ran it and Louise and Duarte were the

observers, because the four of us were in the EVA of the afternoon.

3 – EVA of the day: Loss of coms experiment

We went to site 161 with the ATVs, chosen on our first EVA. Duarte led the EVA, Tiff was chief

scientist and Louise and I participants. We did two runs of Tiff's experiment and it went

smoothly because we are all getting faster and more proficient at setting up the equipment.

Again a successful EVA. Before going back to the airlock, our crew engineer Duarte refilled the

static tank with our help and then we all did the engineering check together, so that we know

what to look for if Duarte cannot be on EVA.

4 – Cyanobacteria experiment

We could not find the planting trays that Cyprien Verseux from crew 142 left, so I cut plastic

cups today and our crew scientist Nuno washed them with distilled water and did some holes in

the bottom (so that water can drain). We will plant the radish seeds tonight.

5 – Astronomy

Our crew astronomer Louise cleaned all the lenses yesterday and went to try them out at night.

It was much better and she managed to do very good pictures of the Moon. Now she is working on

pictures editing. Unfortunately the weather is not helping us and today it's all cloudy so no

astronomy.

6 – Grow tent mounting

Our crew engineer Duarte, our crew astronomer Louise, and our crew scientist Nuno completed the

mounting of the grow tent this morning and fixed the shelf, as instructed by Nick Orenstein.

7 – PR and videos

Our crew journalist Florence has been doing an amazing job and recording a lot of our

activities. She is now editing the videos and we will have a good mid-mission video soon. She

is working on three other video projects at the same time, so it has been a couple of busy days

for her. She is doing a web-serie “Comment ça Mars?”, which is a series of tutorials explaining

how things work on in the hab on “Mars” (i.e. reports, milk, EVA, freeze dried veggies, etc.).

8 – Other

I forgot to mention it yesterday but when we came back from EVA, Tiff had prepared us some

amazing raspberry jam cookies!! Today Nuno and Florence prepared chocolate-peanut butter

cookies, which are also very good!

Last night, half of the crew – me included – was in bed before 10pm. We are having busy days

and are getting exhausted but it's always worth it. So no crazy cards-game night yesterday but

today we are all in better shape so perhaps we will have a group activity.