Science Report
02/02/2015
Nuno Loureiro
In the morning, we ran the “Base Emergency Scenario procedure Testing
(BESpT)” experiment in the morning with Lucie as a
moderator for the simulation. She randomly picked a paper stating the
emergency to be tested today: loss of pressure with ha
evacuation in less that 5minutes. The crew was able to complete the
simulation and seal themselves in the airlock within 4min.
During the debriefing it was noted that some mistakes were made and
should be avoided in the future, e.g. taking the 6
available radios into the EVA leaving none for the moderator that
stays in the hab. Also there was some confusion in the first
few seconds of simulation that lead one of the crew members not to
hear that the simulation was for an immediate
evacuation. During the debriefing it was also noted that before each
simulation the whole crew should sit down together and
review the protocol.
In the afternoon we performed an EVA to run 3 other experiments. The
site was the Y junction close to the Hab as stated in
the EVA requested filled out yesterday:
1) The PED experiment was run with Duarte, Tiffany and Florence as
subjects while the other members helped and monitored
the task. All the data was pointed down and already analysed today.
More data will be collected during the days to follow and
give a clearer view of the influence (if any) of the lack of
references and use of helmet to the PED. For now, with 5 data points
analysed for each of the 20 different distances, the results show a
similar trend as the ones in the literature: PED is accurate
until about 6m and after that point subjects start to underestimate
distances (both verbally and walking)
2) The "EVA Communications Experiment” was ran by two teams:
Duarte/Florence and Florence/Nuno. While performing the
task, the other two crew members were monitoring all the steps of the
team. This finalizes the first round of testing and
tomorrow we’ll start the second round allowing the team members to
talk during the whole procedure. The results of the two
conditions will then be compared: with and without comms.
3) The last EVA’s scientific experiment was the “Dust Mitigation”.
Each member going on the EVA patched two 5in squares of
cloth to the left arm of their suits before leaving. When back to the
hab the patches were collected and dust mitigation was
applied to one of the two squares. Different methods were used: brush,
towel and electrostatic cloth. More data will be
collected in the days to follow in order to analyse what may be the
best method for dust mitigation.
Finally, the radish experiment is also going very well. We found 5
radish sprouts in the cyanobacteria condition vs 3 radish
sprouts in the control one. We will continue reporting the development
of this experiment in future reports.
Summarising everything the answer appears to be 42!