Crew 148

LUCIE POULET - COMMANDER

In 2014, Lucie Poulet was crew scientist in the four-month HI-SEAS Mars simulation mission in Hawaii from March to July and executive officer and GreenHab officer within crew 135 at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah in February. She is commander during the mission of crew 148 at MDRS in January/February 2015. She is a research associate at the Institute of Space Systems of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Bremen. She holds a Master’s in engineering of energy production and process from the National Polytechnique Institute of Lorraine (France) and a Master’s in aerospace engineering from Purdue University. She attended the Space Studies Program of the International Space University in 2012 with a focus on Space Life Sciences and a team project assessing the possibility of developing a network of spaceports in the solar system. In her free time, Lucie likes to run, to hike, to ski and to fly small airplanes.

DUARTE SOUSA - CREW ENGINEERDuarte Sousa has always been fascinated by technology and human performance in extreme environments. During his early teenage years he became passionate about aeronautics and space exploration. He spent most of his time flying radio controlled aircrafts and attended twice the NASA’s Advanced Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama, US. These experiences propelled him to follow a training in Aerospace engineering, receiving a MSc in Aerospace engineering from the Lisbon Institute of technology (IST), Lisbon, Portugal (2009), and further specialising in Space Systems engineering, receiving a master degree from the Institute Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace (SUPAERO) in Toulouse, France (2011). Duarte is currently working for a leading European spacecraft manufacturer company, in the environmental test campaign of the European Union’s global navigation satellite system, being responsible for the mechanical operations, testing and integration of their satellites, at the ESA’s test centre in Noordwijk, Netherlands. In parallel with his professional life Duarte collaborates with scientific space research projects. Early in 2014 he has participated as co-investigator of a neuroscience project in zero-G in an ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign and is now putting his energy into his first analogue space mission at MDRS. Duarte will indeed be the crew engineer for the mission of crew 148 at the Mars Desert Research Station. In his free time Duarte enjoys sailing, SCUBA diving and has just received his first level certificate in underwater freediving. He enjoys practising meditation to balance the body and mind and excel in demanding tasks.

FLORENCE PORCEL - CREW JOURNALISTFlorence Porcel works for the French medias. She began on television (France 5) with two shows about Internet, new technologies and social medias (Le Grand Webze, Le Vinvinteur). Last year she talked about science and space exploration twice a week in a scientific radio show (La Tête au Carré, France Inter) and she co-hosts a game about science in the same show this year. Passionate about science and space exploration, she makes her own video podcast (La folle histoire de l’Univers), she experienced a zero gravity flight last year and she is one of the 705 candidates still competing for the Mars One project. Among the literary prizes she won, one was about a science-fiction short story and her blog post about the history of women in space exploration was published in a book (Les meilleurs blogues de science en français, Editions MultiMondes, 2014). She talked about why she wants to go to Mars in a TEDx talk last June (TEDxVaugirardRoad) and she will do another talk about this topic in TEDxReims in November. As an author and actress, she is writing her own play about Mars exploration.

NUNO LOUREIRO - CREW SCIENTISTNuno Loureiro is a PhD Student at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon & École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). His objective is to identify changes in the human brain while participants learn to perform an arbitrary task. He uses a Brain Machine Interface through electroencephalography and designs simple games that participants need to learn to control just with their thoughts.

Previously to his PhD, Nuno worked at the European Space Agency as a trainee engineer in the Mechanisms Section. In 2012 he attended the Space Studies Program of the International Space University with a focus on Space Life Sciences and a team project assessing the possibility of developing a network of spaceports in the solar system. Nuno will be crew scientist during the mission of crew 148 at the Mars Desert Research Station.

LOUISE LINDBLAD - CREW ASTRONOMERLouise Lindblad studied Engineering Physics with a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. She specialized in Attitude and Orbital Control Systems for satellites and wrote her Master’s Thesis at the European Space Agency about simulations of AOCS systems for conceptual studies. In 2012 she attended the International Space Universitiy’s Space Studies Program where she participated in the Space Life Sciences department and worked on a team project discussing the next generation space stations. After graduating she worked as an AOCS Engineer at OHB Sweden in Stockholm. Currently, she lives in Lisbon where she is working as an aerospace engineer at Tekever, a small Portuguese aerospace company. There she is developing the Attitude Determination and Control System software for a CubeSat. During the mission of crew 148 at MDRS, Louise will be the crew astronomer.