March 6, 2018

SOL 16 - Crew 189 : CSI MDRS

Journalist report,

An unfathomable mystery arose in the Hab in the early morning. Benoît and Laurent had cooked some popcorn chicken yesterday, yet Victoria did not want to eat her part on the evening, and spared it for today in her room. However, as she woke up, all the chicken was gone! Several people were suspected: mice at first, yet there were no crumbs around the bowl. Jérémy and Benoît then, as the first one was not in the Hab when she revealed her loss, and as the lack of food for the second is no longer a secret! However, Victoria would have certainly heard it if someone broke into her room to steal her chicken. The case is still open!

Today was quite a special day in the Hab, as we received two journalists from one of the main French television stations TF1. Presenter Axel Monnier and cameraman Bertrand Guez arrived short after 7am, right in the middle of our sport session. They could thus observe us sweat during our last burpees, such a nice start. After a small breakfast with a piece of French bread (well, rather bread with the French flag in it), it was time for most of us to go on EVA! Our both journalists were part of the mission: Axel even followed us in putting a spacesuit on! Gabriel, Jérémy, Victoria and I as their leader were completing the quite large team.

As it has now become routine, we made our first stop at Pooh’s corner to put the LOAC back in its place. It will yet not stay there long, as Jérémy wants to have the time to complete some measurements inside the Hab as well. We then went for the road of Lith Canyon. It seemed that Bertand sometimes needed a specific framework, as he liked to put himself in acrobatic positions on the rover, in order to be able to record us following the rover on our ATV. However, the road was rather smooth, and we arrived at Lith Canyon without any problem.

Our guests were glad to visit this place, which is probably the nearest to a Martian landscape we could get here. The walk was really pleasant, yet sometimes maybe a bit harsh for Bertrand, who had to bear his 30-pound 50000-dollard camera on his shoulder. As we reached another cliff, we decided to stop our way down: Axel and Bertrand could thus deploy their drones and take some aerial shots, after a short interview of the four of us. It was yet already time to go back to the Hab, where our journalists wanted to take some final shots.

They could question us deeper during our lunch, as they wanted to know what our thoughts about that kind of mission were. We finally could show them some of the experiments we had led for the last weeks, as LOAC and MegaARES’ ones, Laurent’s solar panels or Jérémy’s human factors one. But as the afternoon reached its end, it was already time for them to leave us, ready to reach Salt Lake City where another report awaited them. We still have a lot to do in the Hab before the end of the mission, especially with our rotation video, as we still have many shots to do.