March 7,2018
SOL 17 - Crew 189 : Martian rescuers
Journalist report,
Our day was once again dedicated to emergency procedures, among our other urgent tasks. This time however, the application would be enhanced, and will happen in the middle of an EVA, away from the Hab. After our sport session of the morning, which starts to be quite difficult to complete for most of us (including me) as serious fatigue begins to take place in the crew, Laurent delivered us a new long briefing about emergency procedures, this time only around situations that could happen in space. We learned how to stop a haemorrhage, even with spacesuits on, and how to react quickly in case of difficulties.
We are also near the end of Gabriel’s “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” experiment: instructions have been filled with errors for a while, and we now have to acknowledge which one of us own the right instructions for each module. Before the last day, I lead the rankings, followed by Victoria and Laurent, who are in a tie. Tomorrow will also be the last day we drive Jérémy’s rover: the end of the mission seems closer than ever!
The EVA of the day happened unusually in the afternoon, and was led by Laurent, in order to put his emergency procedures in application. He was followed by Louis, Victoria and Benoît, who wanted to finally be able to deploy his localization experiment. However, he got once more new issues after his instrument had functioned well for 30 minutes. I also asked Louis to take some shots I could include in our rotation video, which he did well.
The team also aimed to bring back Laurent’s solar panels and Jérémy’s LOAC to the Hab, as they want to have the time to work with in the Hab. But before that, Laurent launched the emergency procedure: he simulated an injury case at Pooh’s Corner, an external haemorrhage followed by a heart attack. The other members of the EVA brought him the first aids, and took him back to the Hab, where he entered the main airlock, along with Victoria. After the recompression time was over, he could come back in the Hab, where Jérémy and Gabriel took care of him.
In the meanwhile, Benoît, Louis and Victoria went back to Pooh’s Corner to bring our instruments back to the Hab. The MegaARES is thus our last outside experiment still deployed today: it should nonetheless be brought back tomorrow. As for me, I am still working on our rotation video, which could still take quite a bit of time, as I am not an expert of video editing yet!
Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist.
