February 24th, 2020

Sol 8 – Crew 222: Cold wind blows

The wind today has been very loud. There is no visible movement outside the windows, because there is no vegetation that bends and moves in the wind. There is only sand and hills that stay still even when the wind blows. We were impressed by the sheer speed of it: from our weather station, we recorded a maximum speed of more than 15 m/s! This is rather good news because wind dries out the mud that the snow created. Hopefully, we will have dry ground soon, because going on EVA in mud is very slippery and dangerous.

Today in the GreenHab, Bleuenn showed us a cucumber that’s almost ready to be harvested. It’s going to be amazing to have a fresh, crunchy vegetable! Her spirulina experiment is going well, the algae is growing and will be harvestable in a few days hopefully. Nina’s aerospring moss is also growing: out of the four plants she chose, three have grown significantly and she will be able to transfer the moss into the vertical garden in a few days. All this is very promising!

For a human factor experiment, we played a game called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, about diffusing a bomb. One person has the bomb on their computer, and they have to work in collaboration with an expert who has the manual to diffuse the bomb. We are almost becoming competitive!

We ended the day with a delicious spinach pie staring a stunning “Crew 222” decoration by Nina, and watched Kaamelott all together to have a good laugh before bed.

Author: Marie Bochard, Crew Journalist