202-CommandersReport

Commander Report

02/02/2015

Lucie Poulet

1 – Base emergency evacuation

2 – EVA of the day

3 – Astronomy

4 – Cyano bacteria

5 – Pump issue

6 – Mouse incident

7 – Crashed cargo

8 – Other

Start of the second week. We hope to be able to do more EVAs and astronomy without any weather

problems. Our routine is now fully established and everything goes smoother. And today we

managed to refill the static tank so it is shower day!!

1 – Base emergency evacuation

I was moderator today and the crew had to evacuate the base in 5 minutes. This was pretty

intense and the crew did a good job (in the airlock with all gear in 4 min) but it was noted

for the future that an extensive briefing before each simulation is necessary to ensure its

success.

2 – EVA of the day

This was a walking EVA. Florence, Tiffany, Duarte, and Nuno went towards the roads junction and

performed Nuno's and Tiffany's experiments. They managed to do 3 runs of Nuno's and 2 runs of

Tiffany's experiments. On top of it, they all attached some pieces of cloth to their suit which

will be used for Tiffany's dust experiment (she cut all of these pieces of cloth yesterday

during our day “off”). This EVA was a success, the mud had almost disappeared. The pump still

did not work at this point.

3 – Astronomy

Last night our crew astronomer Louise did some amazing photos of Jupiter and of the Moon

together with our crew scientist Nuno. They also observed one transit and one occultation of

two of the moons of Jupiter. Great progress has been done, it is very positive.

4 – Cyano bacteria

Five pots in the cyano bacteria treatment and three pots in the control treatment have radishes

which germinated and are starting to grow!

5 – Pump issue

After requesting a second EVA to attempt refilling the tank once again, which got approved in

the first place and then denied when we were offline (so could not see the request rejection),

Duarte plugged the pump to another electrical outlet in the lab and both him and Nuno went

outside to refill the static tank. It worked and now our static tank is full. The issue came

from a line of electrical outlets in the lab which was off. More details in the engineering

report.

6 – Mouse incident

We had left all of the candy bars, Cheez-it and cookies in a plastic bag, since we considered

this food not as part of a real Mars mission, where each pound is counted. This morning we

found a Reese on the floor, half way eaten. And this for sure is not one of our crew mates (at

least I hope!) since the plastic wrap around the Reese was also eaten. We've moved all of these

candies in the fridge to limit these types of problems.

7 – Crashed cargo

We had the very good surprise to discover a crashed cargo in front of our airlock door this

morning after the base evacuation, full of awesome goods. We got turkey, chicken, sausage

crumbs, beef, all sorts of cheese, butter and eggs! It made everybody smile and we celebrated

with muffins containing butter and eggs, as opposed to last week when we had to find recipe

without eggs or milk. Everything got inventoried and stored.

8 – Other

Yesterday morning we woke up with “Stellar” by Incubus, choice of Tiffany and this morning we

woke up with “Phonography” by Britney Spears, choice of Florence.

Today we were able to put some cheese in ou rice for lunch and tonight some lobster cakes are

planned. We also have muffins and a chocolate cake (spin off of the muffins dough).