February 23, 2018

SOL 5 – Crew 189 : Mars under the snow

Journalist report,

As the weather forecasts were not very optimistic for today, both of our commandants cancelled todays EVA on yesterday evening. Hence, the morning would be lighter, and our waking was thus delayed by an hour, letting us catch up on our lost sleep. The first thing we noticed when we woke up was that our Martian landscape seemed to have brutally changed colors: it was now covered by a small layer of snow, which gave a new dimension to the scenery. The weather forcing us to stay inside, we lived therefore a rather light day, except for our traditional sport session.

As I did not itemize our exercises yet, I will do it right now! We start with a warm-up: we run on the spot for a while, then do high-stepping and heels to buttocks, before a small sprint. We carry on with lateral and central muscle sheathing, 1 minute for each position. After 10 push-ups, 10 full squats and 20 crunchs, it is time to go on with the core of the session. We can do the exercises of the session in 3 different ways: for each exercise, either 3 repetitions of 20 seconds separated with a 20 seconds break between repetitions and exercises, or 2 repetitions of 30 seconds separated with a 30 seconds break, or a unique repetition of 60 seconds with a 60 seconds break. The complete session is made of 7 exercises, but the team going on EVA does only half of them (4 out of 7 to be fairly precise), which are the followings : semi-squats, crunchs, push-ups, lunges, combined sit ups and knee raises, triceps push-ups on a chair and burpees. No need to say that such exercises are really demanding, especially in their 3 times 20 seconds version!

As the morning was quite free of activities, we decided to play our “Keep talking and nobody explodes” session earlier! We have to say that we got a taste for this game! It is also funny to see the other team play, especially when it is Louis’ time to defuse, as he likes to be sometimes mocking towards his team. Benoît has also been able to make his first observations of the sun, as the sky started to clear in the late morning.

It has now been a week since our arrival in the station, thus we had to draw an inventory of the remaining foodstuffs: Louis and Victoria took care of this task in the early afternoon. After a small break with a taste of Hanabi, Jérémy went on with his rover experience with the rest of the team. But after such a light day, we have planned a heavy day for tomorrow with an important EVA, in which we will retrieve the first data from our outside experiments!