March 3, 2018

SOL 13 - Crew 189 : A new member

Journalist report,

Yesterday evening was quite more animated than the previous one. The reason: a wonderful Blue Moon that decided to show up in a cloudless sky, casting pure shadows on the desert floor. Jérémy, Louis and Laurent with their camera, Benoît with his telescope, and even me with my only eyes, we all had a great time watching it. Yet we could not remain outside late as we had to wake up early on the next morning: we would indeed host a journalist, who would spend the entire day with us, and share our everyday life here.

Laure Andrillon is a French Freelance journalist and picture editor, working in San Francisco bay since 2017. She kindly came to us today to write an article about our mission. We met her at around 7 am, just before she could contemplate us struggling with our sport session. She was also part of our EVA of the morning. Benoît, leader of the day, Louis, Laurent and I completed the team that would go to Lith Canyon for a bit of exploration. But before being allowed to go on our daily walk, we had to go back to our instruments, in order to put the LOAC back to its place, as Jérémy had finished the adjustments he wanted to do. Our HabCom Gabriel was also glad to know that the MegaARES survived yesterday’s strong winds! It finally even did not lift a finger.

After this short stop, I mounted my quad, ready to go on exploring! 20 minutes of nice roads later, we finally arrived to the edge of the cliff. As usual, we had to battle to find a way down, but we were finally able to! The hike was yet quite physical, and we had to make several breaks in order to regain our strength. We followed a dried-up river, until we finally found the real one, deeper in the canyon! We then decided to go back to our vehicles, as the wind started to come up. Some photos later, we were back to the Hab!

Our lunch was punctuated by several debates launched by our guest, for example about Elon Musk, the place of women in our school, but the most central one was about space exploration. She wanted to know what we were thinking about spatial tourism, how we thought space programs would evolve, or even what our generation could achieve in the next years. Then, she interviewed us separately, in order to get an idea of our own plans for the future, but also to know the reasons that led us to take part of this mission, and the experiments we carried out in here. However, the day went very quickly, and it was already time for her to leave the station, and to say goodbye, letting us enjoy our evening meal. Tomorrow will be our second day off, and I can tell you that the team needs it!