1106-CommandersReport

Commander Report

11/06/2014

Digby Tarvin

Flexibility is important on Mars. We started our second day with a definite schedule in mind. For

the morning, Cyprien and Dario were to complete their preparations in the lab, Carmel and Vince

were to complete the plantings in the Green hab, Christiane was to continue constructing the

apparatus for the solar cooker experiment, and I planned to take a closer look at the radio headset

issue and map out the crew tasks for the coming week.

At our morning brief I informed the crew that I would be advancing our daily timetable by half an

hour starting from todays lunch, and that we would be undertaking an EVA in the afternoon starting

at 13:30. This was to include myself, Cyprien who needs to collect samples for his Gene mining,

Vince and Dario who need to complete their ATV familiarization. Carmel was assigned to act as

HabCom, leaving Christiane to complete her Solar Cooker experiment preparation.

I soon realised that the problem with the radios was going to be harder to address than I thought.

We had already found that the multi-meter in the hab was not functioning, which limited my

diagnostic capabilities. We had six radios and four older headsets, only one of which had the

correct plug for our radios. There were two adapters which allowed the headsets with the incorrect

plugs to be physically mated with our radios. All headsets with the incompatible plugs had tags

indicating that neither the microphone nor the speaker were working, the remainder had a working

microphone but no speaker function.

We had obtained alternative headsets from Grand Junction which also required adapters, but these

did not function either.

I asked Christiane to help me test many permutations, and the closest we came to a working radio

headset was obtained by using a thin washer to push the adapterfrom the radio a small distance.

This allowed receive and transmit to work for a short time, but it was not reliably repeatable.

Most tests produced only a working mic or a working speaker if anything, but not both.

We had reached the stage of disassembling one radio for cleaning and trying to determine the way that

the different connectors were wired, when Vince called me aside and asked to be excused from

part of the EVA because the Green hab planting was taking longer than expected, and it was

important that it be completed as quickly as possible for the experimental results to be valid.

Rather than compromising the EVA by changing the timing or composition, I decided to swap the EVAs

that I had planned for today and tomorrow, so that this afternoon we would be having a two man

pedestrian EVA consisting of Cyprien (for more sampling) and Dario. The sampling EVA to continue on

from yesterdays EVA to North Fork (0519082 4252166) will now take place tomorrow. This will free

Vince for the urgent Green hab tasks, and give me more time to attempt to deal with the headset

problem.

After making the rest of the crew aware of the changed plans for the afternoon, I made mission

support aware of the headset status and returned to the investigation.

We observed that the only reliable external functionality for the radios was the microphone on

the old headset which has the correct connector. This suggested that perhaps the use of adapter is

the problem, and the one headset with a compatible plug works apart from a speaker which really is bad.

The only way to prove this seems be to re-open a radio and then physically connect the correct

contacts from a headset. But I decided not to pursue this option until getting feedback from

Mission Support.

The revised EVA left the hab at 14:15, which was only 15 minutes later than planned - a big

improvement on yesterday, and returned to the hab at 17:30, and was inside at 17:51 after

completing some engineering duties. They successfully sampled 11 sites which will be detailed in

the EVA report.

After completing my diagnostic work on the radios, I assisted Christiane with the Solar cooker

construction, which was only fair as I had taken some of her time to help me with the radios.

I am now happy to report that mission support has already confirmed that replacement communications

equipment is on the way from Earth, so we are looking forward to more effective EVAs in the near

future.

Self sufficiency is a worthy goal, but we are not quite there yet. It is always good to be able to

call for help from Earth.

Tomorrow I plan to resume spend the morning completing the schedule for the coming week

while the crew continues with their experiments,

and in the afternoon to proceed with the EVA originally planned for today.