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Journalist Report
04/03/2013
Benoît Hespel
Tour with ATV
Yesterday evening our cook had prepared two different cakes: one with
apple and the other with
chocolate. It was delicious even if one of them was a bit too cooked.
We had then other good news:
after all the rain we had during the day the sky was very clear. We
were very lucky! So we decided
to take advantage of it and we made a full observation night. We went
to the observatory at 8.30
p.m. and we stayed until 6.30. a.m. We made several pauses in the
meantime because it was too cold
outside and we need to take long time exposure pictures with the CCD
camera to have better results.
Despite the time we spent over there we took only few very interesting
photos because we had some
difficulties to find good galaxies or clusters. We also tried to get
Saturn and Jupiter but we
didn’t succeed as we wanted. Anyway we have still some good shots to
process today.
Guess what happened … Yesterday night we finally caught Stobor, the
famous mouse in the hab. It hid
on the ground floor for more than two weeks but we eventually managed
to kill it thanks to traps.
What a surprise when we discovered its corpse. Indeed it was so much
time from the moment we put the
traps that we nearly have forgotten about that mouse. Everyone was
quite happy in the station even
if at the same time we felt a bit sad because Stobor had become a real
icon among MDRS support people.
This morning the astronomer and I got up late to recover from the
observation session. This morning
nobody went out. There was only one outing planned in the afternoon.
So they worked on their project
even If they hadn’t many new measurements from the day before. For
breakfast we had cereals
(cheerios) with milk and dried fruit. It was the last time because
there isn’t any more now.
For lunch it was quite a copious meal that we cooked! Indeed the end
of our rotation approaches so
we see better now what food supply remains in our two blue boxes. So
we decided to eat pasta with
pesto in addition to eggs and bacon. It’s now nearly two weeks that we
don’t really eat as much as
usually. When we saw our plate full of food this noon we were all very
happy. The point is not
really that we are very hungry (we have enough food) but it is
pleasant to eat different meals and
here the choice is quite limited. That’s normal obviously since we are
simulating Martian living
conditions. Comfort is not the priority here! However it doesn’t mean
that it is easy…
After having played cards it was time for three of us (the science
students) to go the planned place
with the ATV’s. It is a canyon about 6 km far from the station. So it
took us only a few minutes to
arrive at the right place. We feared that with all the water that
dropped from the sky yesterday the
soil would have been still moist but it wasn’t the case fortunately.
Very good news for us,
otherwise it would have been quite annoying since we would have been
very dirty. It was the second
time for us that we used the ATV’s and that was still very funny to
drive in the desert. It was
very hot outside but when we were driving it was perfect because the
air was refreshing.
When we arrived at the right place we put our EVA helmet and continue
on foot because it was
impossible to reach the site of interest with the ATV’s. After a while
our geologist found the rocks
that he wanted. In the canyon we also made a lot of photos of our
science team in this wonderful
landscape as you can see on the website. After having collected some
interesting stones, we took
back the ATV’s and returned to the station. But we had one mission
left. We had to find the local
coordinates of the site where we had found petrified wood a week ago.
After a bit more than two
hours we were back at the station. We didn’t have any issues with the
ATV’s or with the crewmembers
so we can conclude it was a very good trip.
During the afternoon the other crewmembers that stayed in the hab
worked on their projects and wrote
their reports. Our webmaster also improved our personal website while
the others worked their
courses. So nothing special happened except routine work.
For dinner we ate tortillas with rice and vegetable protein but the
meat imitation was not very
tasty. Since the simulation is nearly over we don’t have much
observation session left. We only have
two more possible in fact. So we pray for the weather to be good for
the next two days. This evening
it would be the case since we had a sunny day. So we plan to make
still a lot of observation to fill
out our astrophotos collection for our observation project. We don’t
know yet how long we will stay
at the observatory tonight but certainly a long time just like yesterday.
See you tomorrow for new epic adventures
Thoughts from Mars
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