February 26th, 2019
Sol 2 – Crew 206 : Life in red
Une version en français de ce rapport est disponible ici.
At the precise moment my feet touched the Martian ground, and my eyes raised up to the sky, it was like time had stopped stopped in front of me.
There are incredible places that challenge our imagination, with their shapes, their reliefs, their colors. The Martian desert I had the chance to admire this morning was one of those. In front of this marvelous theater, I wish I had the talent of Picasso, Monet or Turner to capture that precise moment, that sky, that landscape only a painting can give back the magnificence.
But this EVA had above all a scientific goal: deploy the LOAC (an aerosol particle counter) and the weather station. It was my first EVA, along with Cerise, Jérémy and Gaspard, on the rovers Curiosity and Opportunity. Quite funny that not so long ago, in 2018, they were the only two active “beings” on the surface of Mars.
Aurélien, HabCom of the day, helped us to spend the five minutes of the depressurization with a musical ambiance: La Vie en Rose by Edith Piaf. The words to describe this day came directly to me: La Vie en Rouge.
After the concentration and the rigour needed for the EVA, a surprise was waiting for us inside: a pizza crust prepared by Aurélien, while Norbert was bringing his harvest : basil, sage and parsley, in order to give a providential freshness to the meal. We shared two pizzas that we named Verde and Roja. Aurélien and Norbert logically take the head of the Martian food contest.
Then the afternoon was the first one of a routine that will last all through the mission with both human factors experiments: rover driving and virtual reality.
The Sun is falling down on Mars, giving its last colors to the landscape, before putting it in obscurity and let the stars shine in the pure sky. I glance at the horizon, keeping that moment in my memory for ever, today, I walked on Mars.
Author : Benjamin Auzou, Journalist
