Commander Report
Mehdi Scoubeau
26/02/2016
Dear Earth,
A daily planning has to be flexible and easily adapted when required. Or at least this is what we needed today. Testing the ATV, exploring interesting regions and conducting several of our outside experiments while being filmed and interviewed by Phobos TV at the same time took longer than we thought. This is why the morning EVA was a bit longer than initially planned but still clearly within battery life possibilities. However, as a matter of fact, one week is not enough to forget how to receive guests and we hope we have done a good job with the journalist today.
The afternoon EVA allowed us to train the rest of the team to ride on the ATVs so that now we have a fully briefed crew for the next explorations. This is good news that our exploration vehicles are fully operational and ready to serve their purpose. The crew is very excited for a first EVA a little bit further from the Hab tomorrow.
The different assigned fixes in the Hab are soon to be delivered and we feel like we are doing a good job with taking care of and improving the station for the next crews. The living conditions and environment factors are always more important than we think for the spirits of scientists and engineers working on experiments. In that context, we also have a lot of ideas for small but relevant improvements that could be added to the Hab in the future (wall-projected compass upstairs…).
On Sunday, we scheduled a Martian conference where every member of the crew will present and explain to the others the progress realized so far on their experiment. This conference will help us organize the EVA planning for next week in order to make the best of the remaining time of the simulation. The motto is collective success instead of personal achievement.
Have a nice weekend on Earth.