0226-JournalistsReport

MDRS 164 Journalist Report 26/02/2016

Sol 5. After waking up a bit tired (watching « 400 Days » the evening before was probably not the best idea ever), we welcomed a very nice and friendly journalist from Phobos TV, who spent the day with us. He shot the EVA, the space suits, our experiments and the daily life in the Hab. The most difficult part of it was certainly remaining serious in front of him. Now that we are all by ourselves for dinner, we are making up for all the « yo momma » and « knock knock » jokes we could not do during the day.

- Astronomy is finally under way ! Afer encountering a few troubles in opening the Musk Observatory (we had to use 20kg pliers to break the lock), and spending a night observing noting but blurry light spots on the screen, tonight will be our first operational night at the observatory with Arthur, the crew astronomer. The telescope was tested during daytime, and all seemed nominal. On the first night, we were able to observe, through the little findscope, a pale white dot a few degrees above the moon, surrounded by four little aligned dots : Jupiter and his satellites. Being able to see them from several millions kilometers away gave me vertigo. Tonight, we will be able to focus on it through the main telescope, and I am almost afraid of getting any closer to this foreign planet.

- We made a new friend : the sweet voice of the EMUI glasses are now familiar to Louis, the crew engineer. Using vocal control, he can use them to do several tasks during his EVAs : taking pictures, writing notes, consulting a map of the neighborhood of the Hab, while being hand free for other experimentations. Even though these huge spectacles make Louis look like a Harvard’s medieval philosophy teacher (I am sure he is actually wearing a tweed jacket with pieces of leather on the elbows under his space suit), that is exactly the kind of devices that will be used during future space manned missions.

- MOMA : we did not bring the Museum Of Modern Art with us, but rather a tool for the Measurement of Opacity of Martian Atmosphere. Using an Arduino chip and three leds (green, blue, red), Mehdi will predict the nebulosity and the quantity of dust in the air to improve the efficiency of our solar panels.

Camille Gontier, Crew Journalist MDRS 164