Crew 162 Journalist Report Sol 11
February 3rd, 2016
Carmen Felix
SOL 11 on Mars. Today our Crew Photographer from Earth returned back home.
He stayed with us during the night and he left after lunch today. I think
he was very happy about the opportunity to spend time with us, and perform
his job, which he did very professionally. I guess he was surprise by
realizing how many things we need to do differently on Mars than on Earth,
like our water management system, the way we need to re-hydrate dried food
to prepare lunch and all our cycles for depressurization and pressurization
before and after going on an EVA. Nevertheless, he cooked dinner for us
yesterday, and he learned how to master the dried-food kitchen: Mars
Marinara Pasta! The book with recipes from MDRS, one that has been done by
one of the earlier crews, has helped us to discover amazing meals that can
be done with ingredients at hand. Just delicious!
We planned to wake up today before 6 to go outside and look at the 5-planet
alignment, so our Crew Astronomer went out to prepare the observatory for
us. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew couldn’t rest completely during the
night, as one had back pain, and another one spent part of the night
coughing. It was also below freezing outside, so after a while our crew
Astronomer came inside to warm up and decided to try again tomorrow. Safety
first! Before sunrise, our crew photographer managed to capture some nice
shots of the first sunrays illuminating Mars.
We had breakfast together and we started our preparation for today’s EVA.
Our crew photographer went out with two of us at a walking distance near
the hab for a short EVA, with the purpose to get some nice Martian pictures
and GPS data. After this, he also took some portraits of our robotic rover
and our team. The sunlight was so bright that the photographer needed to
try in different spots to get a perfect picture of each of us.
The lunch for the day was leftovers: veggie stew and pasta marinara! Our
visitor left the hab after lunch and we decided to rest a little bit. These
days have been very intense for each of us, as there is so much to do and
we are only three people. HSO recommended resting, and recovering energies,
as the freezing temperatures and working so much can impact our health
negatively.
During the late afternoon, we resumed some of our research and we are
looking forward for the last 3 days of our mission!
To Mars and Beyond!