MDRS 164 Journalist Report 25/02/2016
Sol 5. Today, Arthur used the Musked Observatory and its inexpensive
equipment to observe a bush 10m away from the Hab ; Mehdi grumbled all
day about his home-made bread not being salted enough ; Mohammad and
Louis almost lost the NorCal drone in the desert, and decided to call
it « PIkachu » ; and Jérémy discovered the « Photo Booth » application
on the iPad lent by the Cadmos, leading to an all time high in his
productivity.
A TV reporter from Phobos TV is going to spend the whole day with us
tomorrow, to document our mission for national broadcast. So,
regarding the pathetic events from today, I think it would be a good
idea to show the good mental health of the crew and the seriousness of
our scientific procedures by giving an overlook on how our experiments
have been going so far :
- The NorCal drone has been taken out of his box yesterday, and now
seems totally functional. It was taken out of the Hab in the afternoon
through the engineering airlock : the main objective was to control it
from the Hab and to drive it through the tunnel to the Musk
Observatory. Mission accomplished, illustrating the range of the
emitters and the capacity of its batteries. Return was a bit erratic
as we lost video contact : we had to watch it from the kitchen window.
- The good ol’ CRV lent by Association Planète Mars is still working
fine and happily delivering its payload at the bottom of the highest
cliffs. During lunch, we watched an old documentary broadcasted on
French TV a few years ago and covering MDRS 43 mission : we were
happily surprised to see that the CRV was already part of this
mission.
- After lunch, Jeremy always stays in the kitchen, religiously reading
food packages and looking at stuffs on his iPad. He is not in need for
an after lunch coffee, but is writing down everything he ate in the
software lent by the CadMos. His food analysis will be used by the
French space agency to prepare Thomas Pesquet’s mission to the ISS
next november.
To continued tomorrow !
Camille Gontier, Crew Journalist MDRS 164