310-JournalistsReport

Journalist Report

Olenka Jibaja Valderrama

03/10/2015

Hello Mission Report:

Yesterday we saw the movie Apollo 13 at night, after sending our daily reports. What a movie! I had heard many positive comments of this film, but it was definitely so much better than what I expected. There is a quote I particularly liked a lot: “Failure is not an option”. I kept thinking about that for a long while and I really think it makes sense, no matter the planet we live in. Some extreme situations demand no mistakes in order to be successful, but there are simpler ones in which even being wrong can be used as a learning experience. As investigators and explorers we should have that in mind, not getting the results we expected does not mean that all of the efforts were useful. In fact, different results can be more interesting, that’s the best part of science.

As part of my individual project, I did my daily observations of the sweetpotato and radish plants. The sweetpotato plants are growing slowly, the radish plants are surprising me because they are growing really fast. At the beginning, I used soil from Dakota formation to plant them and I thought that the properties of this soil may cause a longer time for the plants to grow, but I was wrong. Right now 5 of the seeds are growing, I can see stems and even leaves. I will definitely have to move them to largest pots soon.

Romulo Cruz conducted an EVA in order to take samples of rocks in order to analyze them and search for organic components.

Luis Castillo had a lot of work today as Green Hab Engineer. As the plants are growing, they need more space. He put all the plants in bigger pots, but now he has to find out a way to place them all in the little Green Hab. Our crew has two projects in the Green Hab too, that’s why we are short of space.

We can’t believe we have so few days left before our simulation comes to an end. Days are passing by so fast and we can’t stop that, but we will definitely doing our best to make these days productive and meaningful.

Best regards,

Olenka Jibaja Valderrama

Journalist – Crew 150