Commander Report
04/14/2013
Liz Mitchell
Everyone is in good spirits.
Today, we had two EVAs (morning and evening). On both EVAs, crews
familiarized themselves with
using the GPS, the ATVs, the landscape, and geology research methods.
Everyone used the pre-built
labs created by the MCC crew last semester. This orientation lab was
extremely helpful, as only one
person on our crew has a background in geology.
EVA 1 Morning: Brad Turner, Santiago Vellajeo, and Kyle Flahterty
EVA 2 Afternoon: Liz Mitchell, Jennifer Johnson, and James Veselka
Today, we took turns cooking. Jennifer Johnson, James Veselka, and I fixed
lunch for everyone while
the others were on EVA. We had pasta and marinara sauce, creamed spinach,
and left over bread (from
the day before).
After lunch, we spent an hour working on individual projects (blogs,
pictures, student research
project).
The second crew went on their orientation EVA in the afternoon. The first
crew worked on cooking
cookies and bread for us (a great surprise!). This turned into a great team
building event and
helped continue to increase our camaraderie and teammenship.
The second crew returned and we ate dinner together.
Tonight, we plan to go to the astronomy lab, because it is supposed to be
clear tonight.
Tomorrow, we plan to do the inside-hab microbiology lab and the astronomy
lab. We are also planning
two EVAs (a morning and an afternoon, comprised of 3 crew members each) to
Candor Chasma. This EVA
will survey erosion patters and evaporite deposits. Santiago will also
collect samples for his
geology research project.
Current problems:
The gasoline has not been re-filled. Please see Kyle's engineering report
for specifics. The three
working ATVs currently have 3/4 gasoline.
The rescue red ATV has one flat tire.
Helmet 3 is really busted up. It almost looks like someone fell on their
helmet. It's still
use-able, it just probably needs to be replaced at the end of the season.
The jumpsuits are getting a little stinky.
We cannot find the hand mirrors (the MCC group in January 2012 had these)
for use during the EVAs.
We could not get the headsets to any of the walkie-talkies to work. These
have the wrong type of
adapter (a 3.5 mm to a 2.5 mm, where the 3.5 mm had a microphone hook-up,
where the 2.5 does not).
This is making communication during EVAs a bit difficult. We are working
around the problem.
Suggestions:
We only have one bottle of Sriracha sauce. The crew LOVES this. In the
future, suggest having more
bottles.
The crew is drinking lots and lots and lots of gatoraid, to stay hydrated.
We think that we will
finish the gigantic canister of gatoraid by the end of this week. Suggest
having 2 or 3 back-ups,
to make sure future crews do not run out.