0225-JournalistReport

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