Journalist Report
03/27/2013
Benoît Hespel
A surprising day
There is no doubt that living conditions on Mars aren’t as good as in
Belgium. Indeed at home we are
used to eat whenever and whatever we want. This is clearly not the
case in the station. Our food
supplies are quite small and we have to ration it in order not to miss
it the last days of our
rotation. That is precisely what is difficult because we are all
hungry (we eat far less than
usually). I think that it begins to influence the mood of the team.
This is amazing to see how lack
of food can modify people’s behavior in such a short time. For example
we become all a bit touchy
and grumpy. One other surprising thing is that we all check what the
others drink or eat to be sure
that they don’t have more than us. If I had to use a good analogy I
would say that when meal is
served, we are like hyenas around a prey. Now that we have realized
that food can have a serious
impact on the ambience in the hab, we will try to eat a bit more;
otherwise we wouldn’t be able to
stay here for ten more days.
That’s the reason why yesterday evening we finally decided to cook
chicken with mash and apple
compote. It was our first really well-balanced meal, according to me
of course. We enjoyed it very
much, as you can see on pictures.
Then time has come for the astronomer and me to observe the sky.
Despite the numerous clouds in the
sky we managed to make some interesting observations: Cappella,
Sirius, Betelgeuse and so on. We
also looked at Jupiter’s atmosphere where we perceived one white strip
at the equator. Because we
now have the telescope under control, we are able to calibrate it
quite easily so that we have more
time for observation, that’s a good thing. Without the imaging program
for the CCD camera we can’t
do anything more and so our project was blocked. That’s the reason why
at 0.00 we were back in the
station. Other crewmembers were still awake. Some of them were playing
cards and another was
updating our website. Half an hour later we decided to go to bed
because we had two outings in the
next morning, so we had to be in a good shape.
The fourth day in the station began with a small issue: the
alarm-clock of our commander was off and
so we got up thirty minutes late. We had to hurry up since four
members of the crew were supposed to
leave at 9.00 a.m. So the sport session was shortened and the
breakfast quick served. This morning
we didn’t eat bread but instead we tried instant oatmeal. There were
different flavors so that
everyone could choose the one he preferred. Still another thing I
never had eaten before going in
the station. We are all discovering new tastes here because we are
obliged to eat what is available
and so we can’t complain.
Then it was already time for the four crewmembers to put their suits
on. After ten minutes of
depressurization we headed all to the north regions of Utah’s desert.
The mission of the first group
of two crewmembers was to continue to accumulate data on the streambed
and in particular to measure
the width, the depth and the slope of some small tributaries. The goal
of the other group was
strongly different: they had to go to a point located fice kilometers
from the station in order to
determine the average walking velocity when wearing EVA suits in the
desert. This will help us to
have an idea of the distance a group can cover during an outing. We
chose a long distance because
the desert is quite undulating and sometimes we needed to climb hill.
That’s the reason why we need
an average speed.
We left quite early in the morning so that it wasn’t too hot outside.
The sun was already strongly
shining so that the ground was very bright and it was really difficult
to keep the eyes open without
sunglasses. Two of us stopped at the now famous streambed while the
others continued straight ahead.
After about 2 kilometers our GPS displayed low battery. That was a bit
annoying because we were
obliged to shut it off when not in use to save power. Because of
limited time of such expedition (to
simulate the limited quantity of oxygen) we were only able to cover
3.2 kilometers. Then after
having taken beautiful pictures we turned back and headed to the station.
One important thing to say is that during our trip we saw some waste
in the desert and that was
really inacceptable in such a beautiful environment. So we profited of
our mission to pick and carry
them to the station.
During all the outing we experienced some issues with communication
again since we were far from the
hab but eventually everything went well. When we arrived at the
station at noon we had to wait in
front of the air-lock room because the other group was already in. It
made us realize that we should
have had to manage with the other group to be there at the same time.
That’s an important point for
simulation.
At 1.00 p.m. it was time to eat. It had been four days since we saw
bacon in the box and we really
began to swindle. So we cooked eggs and bacon and it was really tasty.
We enjoyed eating something
fat one time. As dessert we even took a cereal bar, mmmh… This was a
good lunch. Before working on
our projects again we played cards for thirty minutes, as usual.
In the afternoon some of us went to Hanksville because the two food
boxes that we received when we
arrived at the MDRS were not full. What a pleasure when they came back
with additional flour and
rice. We could see smiles on every crewmember’s faces. We just needed
extra food to be in good mood
again! Besides there was another very good news (for the astronomer
and me especially): they had
found the laptop needed to take picture of stars with the CCD camera.
We were thus very impatient to
use it this night. So you can expect beautiful photos in the next few days.
Then it was really time to write down the different reports of the day
since it was already 4.30
p.m. I don’t know how it came but time flies here… In some sense it is
a good thing because it means
that we are all well busy but it also means that we have nearly no
time for other activities like
sport, studying our courses (reminder : our team is completely
composed of students of UCL, a big
university in Belgium) or anything else. But it is a fact that day
after day we are more and more
organized, which reduces waste time.
Thoughts from Mars