306-JournalistsReport

Journalist Report

Olenka Jibaja Valderrama

03/06/2015

Hello Mission Support:

I sent my report from my gmail account yesterday at 7:30 p.m. as I had trouble signing in through Outlook. As you can see in the page print, it seems like I wasn't allowed to, so I am sending it to you again. I am sorry, I appreciate your consideration.

Living in Mars is great, but it demands some sacrifices. I think the hardest part is when you start missing family and friends, that’s what happened to me today as it’s my little sister’s birthday. This is the first time ever I spend this day away from home, so it felt different. Anyway, today my mind was busy as I was in charge of lunch and we have been constructing the model mockup of the show bag dispenser. I didn’t have much time to feel blue, I has to keep working! Our team projects are doing great. Yesterday we had very nice results in the first trial of our warming system and today the construction of the model mockup took us a long while.

Sergio Postigo and I tried to make a potato and meat pie for lunch which ended up to taste different from what we expected. It wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t delicious either. I felt a little disappointed, even knowing that it wasn’t 100% our fault as we are not used to cook dried potatoes. I hope next time goes better.

The happiest part of my day was going to do my daily observations of the sweetpotato and radish and finding out that the radish plants are

growing. I knew that these kind of plants grow fast on Earth, but I didn’t know if that also worked with the soil I took from Dakota formation. These are very good news. Luis Castillo and Sergio Postigo were reading a paper that they found especially interesting: “A survey of space robotics”, published by NASA. It is about the key areas in which we should invest money and efforts in order encourage space exploration. It also remarks the expected role robot developers must have in the next ten years. They are reading this paper because they want their project to be related to the real needs NASA has, that’s why they have made some changes in the planification. Their first phase is being developed here during this rotation and it consists in a system to measure the oxygen plants produce, the temperature and humidity, as a way to get data. After that comes the second phase in which they use actuators to in order to modify the conditions of the system.

Jim Gora has calibrated the parameters of his dron controller. He also has been looking for some conectors his needed for his project.

Romulo Cruz has conducted an EVA in the morning in order to get samples in Mancos Shale Tunuc Member. He was impressed because he saw

something like a rocket in the sky while he was doing his sample taking. In the afternoon, he dried his samples to analyze them.

Despite of the fact that I woke up feeling a little blue, my day has been interesting and productive. Spending time with my crew is great, I can’t believe how fast time goes. We just have 8 days left!

Best regards,

Olenka Jibaja Valderrama

Journalist – Crew 150