February 24th, 2019
Sol 0 – Crew 206 : Our New Home
The six of us woke up after a difficult night in the Science Dome, because of the lack of comfort but above all because of our excitement to begin our mission. The whole crew chose to begin the day with a sport session! That was a difficult session for some of us, but we all needed it to wake up and prepare for the three weeks of mission ahead of us.
At 0800 Crew 205 left the Hab to return to their five countries. Natalia, Dave, Nathan, Maria, Ghenim, Daniel, Hannah and Veronica let us the station after a full afternoon of training yesterday. We wish you well! You’ve done a good job here in the MDRS, even if the martian weather wasn’t clement with you. We will continue to hold the station well and make great science here on Mars!
We then spent the whole morning getting used to the Hab, and we took our first breakfast composed of milk and scrambled eggs. We also chose our rooms, our tiny zones of privacy in the Hab.
For the rest of the day, waiting for Atila to train us, we all worked on our experiments or on the Hab’s organization: Norbert, our GreenHab Officer, spent a lot of time in the GreenHab to discover the plants in here and understand their needs. Cerise, our crew Biologist and Health and Safety Officer tested everything in the Campus to ensure our safety : alarms, fire extinguishers, medical supplies and radios. Gaspard, our engineer and the “hacker” of the team tackled the internet consumption of our devices to avoid data losses. At the same time, Aurélien and I were in the kitchen organising the food supplies that arrived with us. And Jérémy, Commander of our mission prepared all the material necessary to track our water consumption.
At 1430, Atila arrived to train us with the rovers and gave us his last pieces of advice.
We had a long discussion about our goals for the mission. And then, it was time to close the airlock door and begin our simulation.
I am Benjamin, journalist of the crew 206, million of kilometers away from Earth, in the Mars Desert Research Station. The weather here is beautiful, even if the soil is still damaged by the storm that struck Crew 205’s mission. My crew and I will sleep well after this tiring day. I am in a hurry to wake up tomorrow to start experiments and Extra Vehicular Activities, and to live the Martian Dream.