Dear Earth,

We did our first EVA today: Sol 3 is definitely a milestone in our
mission. With the eyes still full of stars after our night-sky
observation, we faced some unexpected issues keeping the earplugs in
place. Luckily, MacGyver is among us, so we ended up wearing bubble
wrap around the head. This very professional look was in perfect
harmony with our first words when stepping outside: one second before
the solemn “It’s a small step…” prepared by Simon, Mouâdh dropped a
quite down-to-earth “Where did they put that shovel again?”. End of
the dream.

The EVA was the occasion to start working on two of the most exciting
experiments we brought here. Indeed we deployed the atmospheric
balloon and we dug the hole to bury the seismometer.

Louis, Simon, Mouâdh and I came back to the airlock with some ideas
for Xavier, which is currently adapting diving protocols to EVAs. The
nice lunch prepared by Xavier, Louis and Victoria took the form of a
lively EVA debriefing, followed by the routine work on experiments and
reports.

Important advice for future Mars explorers: the sweet fragrance from
the bread machine is quite efficient to cover the smell of a 7-person
crew keeping away from the shower for four Sols…

Ad Astra!

Arthur Lillo
Commander of the pragmatic Crew 175