Commander Report
02/01/2015
Lucie Poulet
1 – Astronomy
2 – Hab cleaning
3 – Engineering check
4 – EVA suit backpacks
5 – Exercise
6 – Fire incident
7 – Other
Today was our day off, so the schedule was pretty much free. We were all free to relax reading
a book, work on our personal things, nap, or catch up on research tasks. We had four main
objectives though:
Clean the hab
Perform the pump maintenance
Check the EVA suit backpacks
Continue our internet data tracking
1 – Astronomy
Last night, Louise showed Florence, Duarte and I Jupiter and its moons, our Moon and the
Pleiades. She also took this opportunity to take some great pictures of the Moon which is
becoming full. It was a short session, mainly for visual observation so we won't send any
astronomy report today.
2 – Hab cleaning
We started with cleaning the kitchen, the floors, and all the counter surfaces, as well as the
EVA suit helmets, the EVA gloves and my suit, which were all full of mud from our recent EVA.
This was really efficient and we were done before 1pm.
3 – Engineering check
We performed a 30-min EVA for engineering check today; Duarte, our crew engineer, and myself
went outside. We did not manage to refill the static pump. We tested multiple plugs, thinking
the rain could have damaged some of them. None worked so we thought the pump was damaged but we
tested it when we came back and it worked fine. You can have more details on this in the
enginering report.
4 – EVA suit backpacks
Our crew XO and HSO is also an EVA specialist and has a look today on some malfunctionning
backpacks, fogging up a lot on EVAs. It turned our that the box is not sealed so the hoses are
not delivering sufficient air to the helmet. She came up with a couple of mitigation solutions
she would like to submit for your review. You will hear about it tonight in a separate email.
5 – Exercise
Tonight we just performed a Kempo workout of the Pi90X program! Very good to end this day off!
6 – Fire incident
While cooking potaoes in hot vegetable oil for lunch, a big flame (about 80 cm high) appeared
in the pan and lasted for about 10-20 seconds. No damage is to report but is was very
impressive and I was litterally caught with surprise in front of this bruning pan which I moved
from the stove, in order not to burn surrounding things. Luckily nothing around caught fire nor
was damaged with smoke. The good news is that the fire alarm went on. Since there was not much
smoke, it went off quite fast.
7 – Other
For brunch this morning we had crepes with eggs, bacon and hashbrowns from Tiffany and Louise
and tonight Louise and Duarte are making hamburgers!!