Commander Report
12-22-15, Barak Stoltz
After a satisfyingly diligent day we woke up to a well-earned breakfast consisting of the best kind of food, leftovers. We went around the table summarizing today’s plan. Once we were finished with our briefing, James Giammona and Anna Ialeggio prepared for their EVA mission. Anna had brilliantly recalled that she has once heard that scuba divers use baby shampoo to defog their helmets (as issue that has haunted us for the entirety of our stay). We then recalled that we have a shampoo which resembles baby shampoo with its ‘cautious’ choice of chemicals. Testing this on our helmets we found out that IT WORKED MIRACULOUSLY, fogged helmets are a thing of the past (celebration is due).
After this great discovery, James and Anna took off for a usual EVA check up on our water, gasoline, and propane levels. Once they finished this simple checkup they proceeded onwards with their mission, continuing our previous data gathering both about the maximum range of the walkie-talkies as well as the range of the emergency alert button on said walkie-talkies. Many interesting results were concluded through our EVA; mainly understanding that different talkies produce varying levels of clarity with use.
As we typically do, the rest of our day was spent preparing our CapCom reports as well as working on our individual projects. Tonight is the night James attempted contacting the ISS via an APRS beacon which had a message attached to it saying “HI FROM MDRS”, his mission was unsuccessful for unforeseen reasons.
We are nearing the end of our rotation and there is still much work to be done. We are all eager to push the boundaries of our individual projects and see just how far we can push the MDRS program as a whole forward.