Commander Report
02/02/2015
Lucie Poulet
1 – Base emergency evacuation
2 – EVA of the day
3 – Astronomy
4 – Cyano bacteria
5 – Pump issue
6 – Mouse incident
7 – Crashed cargo
8 – Other
Start of the second week. We hope to be able to do more EVAs and astronomy without any weather
problems. Our routine is now fully established and everything goes smoother. And today we
managed to refill the static tank so it is shower day!!
1 – Base emergency evacuation
I was moderator today and the crew had to evacuate the base in 5 minutes. This was pretty
intense and the crew did a good job (in the airlock with all gear in 4 min) but it was noted
for the future that an extensive briefing before each simulation is necessary to ensure its
success.
2 – EVA of the day
This was a walking EVA. Florence, Tiffany, Duarte, and Nuno went towards the roads junction and
performed Nuno's and Tiffany's experiments. They managed to do 3 runs of Nuno's and 2 runs of
Tiffany's experiments. On top of it, they all attached some pieces of cloth to their suit which
will be used for Tiffany's dust experiment (she cut all of these pieces of cloth yesterday
during our day “off”). This EVA was a success, the mud had almost disappeared. The pump still
did not work at this point.
3 – Astronomy
Last night our crew astronomer Louise did some amazing photos of Jupiter and of the Moon
together with our crew scientist Nuno. They also observed one transit and one occultation of
two of the moons of Jupiter. Great progress has been done, it is very positive.
4 – Cyano bacteria
Five pots in the cyano bacteria treatment and three pots in the control treatment have radishes
which germinated and are starting to grow!
5 – Pump issue
After requesting a second EVA to attempt refilling the tank once again, which got approved in
the first place and then denied when we were offline (so could not see the request rejection),
Duarte plugged the pump to another electrical outlet in the lab and both him and Nuno went
outside to refill the static tank. It worked and now our static tank is full. The issue came
from a line of electrical outlets in the lab which was off. More details in the engineering
report.
6 – Mouse incident
We had left all of the candy bars, Cheez-it and cookies in a plastic bag, since we considered
this food not as part of a real Mars mission, where each pound is counted. This morning we
found a Reese on the floor, half way eaten. And this for sure is not one of our crew mates (at
least I hope!) since the plastic wrap around the Reese was also eaten. We've moved all of these
candies in the fridge to limit these types of problems.
7 – Crashed cargo
We had the very good surprise to discover a crashed cargo in front of our airlock door this
morning after the base evacuation, full of awesome goods. We got turkey, chicken, sausage
crumbs, beef, all sorts of cheese, butter and eggs! It made everybody smile and we celebrated
with muffins containing butter and eggs, as opposed to last week when we had to find recipe
without eggs or milk. Everything got inventoried and stored.
8 – Other
Yesterday morning we woke up with “Stellar” by Incubus, choice of Tiffany and this morning we
woke up with “Phonography” by Britney Spears, choice of Florence.
Today we were able to put some cheese in ou rice for lunch and tonight some lobster cakes are
planned. We also have muffins and a chocolate cake (spin off of the muffins dough).