13 Février 2017

SOL 1 – Crew 175 : The real business

Journalist report, 02/13/17.

Today is the first real Sol, mission starts at 2:00 p.m., and it is in this perspective that we woke up this morning: ready to deal with it. That is why the theoretical awakening was at 7:00 a.m. As everybody who knows me would expect, I was unable to simply move before 7:30, but the intention was here. We started the day by a sport session prepared by our crew health and safety officer, Simon, testing his sport program in situ for the first time. He experiments on him the effects of the mission on his physical performances, so that we could not miss joining him for a bit of team building while sweating together. Even if the breakfast was to come, Xavier and I might have done it with a bit too much zeal, being close to throw up at the end of it. Anyway, after a quick breakfast, everybody was happy to have burnt a few calories, and ready for the beginning of the day: finishing the building of the fence, then go out a little with the ATVs to discover the neighbourhood before noon.

Finishing the fence was pretty quick, we mostly had to cover what we built yesterday with plastic, and fix it. I started a new job as a journalist, filming scenes, to start to pile up shots, in order to be able to prepare a video blog, that should be released during the second week. Then, we hurried a little to be able to go out before noon. We reached a beautiful spot where the MDRS was visible. The landscape was really stunning, especially under such a sun, and till our arrival, we never really took the time to pay attention to it.

For lunch, we had our first rehydrated meat, clearly bad-looking, reminding us dog food, and stinking horribly before being boiled, but a new time, it was surprisingly good. Most of rehydrated food just seems to lose most of its taste, but with little spices, it is clearly not that hard to eat. At 1:00 p.m. we had our first briefing on our own, settling our personal and collective goals, informing everyone more precisely about our personal agenda, and determining our first priorities for EVAs. Then, at 2:00, the time had come: we closed the airlock. The scene was theatrical but also meaningful: nobody would ever go out without a space suit during the next 3 weeks…

The afternoon was filled with a bit of arrangement, organising the lower deck, moving stuff between the modules. Then, everybody work on his own, sometimes by pair: Arthur and Louis established a first EVA planning, Victoria listed all plants and equipment from the greenhab, Mouadh assembled and tested the seismometer, Xavier and Simon built a customized (I said customized on purpose) furniture for the Vegidair, and I worked on all the pictures and films we took from the past two days. We now are in a good atmosphere of work, everyone being busy. I did not really imagine that days would last this few before coming…

Louis MANGIN, crew journalist MDRS 175

Panoramic view. Guess where the station is…