Commander Report
01/31/2015
Lucie Poulet
1 – Emergency fire simulation
2 – EVA of the day: engineering check
3 – Cyanobacteria experiment
4 – Internet problems
5 – Other
The sun has come back today but it still is very muddy outside. Also the whole crew has
prepared lots of nice attentions for me because it is my birthday. Since today is Saturday and
that everybody was getting very tired, we decided to sleep in a little and start the day at 9am
instead of 7am. And tomorrow will be a no-EVA day to give everybody some time to work on data
analysis and personal projects. This way we can start the second week fully rested and
preapred.
1 – Emergency fire simulation
We had a level 1 fire in the hab today at 13:00. Duarte was the moderator and coordinated the
drill. The rest of us fought the fire and managed to stop it, although it took us a little over
8 min to find it! It was the autoclave oven in the science lab. Everyone did a great job and
our procedures are getting better every day.
2 – EVA of the day: engineering check
At 15:00, Duarte, Louise, Florence and I exited the airlock for a short EVA. Initially Nuno was
supposed to come instead of Florence but he preferred to stay inside. Although we were supposed
to go North, Tiff asked us to explore one site South of the hab, so we started with that. It
turned out that they had prepared a small treasure hunt for me!! So we did that at the same
time as finding new potential sites for the PED and Loss of Coms experiments. We then did some
PR photos for families and sponsors. And we ended the EVA with an engineering check. We did not
have time to go North because walking in this mud slowed us considerably.
3 – Cyanobacteria experiment
The radishes are planted and got watered in the morning.
4 – Internet problems
All of us installed a data download monitoring system and we are still trying to figure out
where the data leak comes from.
5 – Other
The wake-up song today was “I'm alive” of Metric followed by the full album of Angus and Julia
Stone. We then had a nice brunch of eggs, bacon, pancakes and rice pudding. Tonight my crew
mates prepared a chocolate cake to celebrate my birthday!!
I would like to end this report emphasizing the fact that this crew is awesome: always ready
and efficient to work but also knows when to relax and have some fun. This is the mid-mission
report and everything is going very well, although not all the crew members knew each other
before the start of the mission. We've had some unplanned external events which have generated
delays compared to the initial schedule but we've managed to deal with them and come back on
track or found solutions to mitigate them. We are looking forward to this second week!