Journalist report, 02/28/17 – Sol 16: Mardi gras.
Today, no EVA was planned in the morning, so that we decided to wake up one hour late. After our sport session, we celebrated Mardi Gras in the American way: eating blueberry pancakes. The day was supposed to be studious: everybody has realised that we now have only three days left, and we all want to end the simulation well. Everything that we wanted to be done by the end of it is now supposed to be well advanced.
Personally, I work hard on the mission video (you may notice a name change). I want it to be quality work and try to do my best on it. Video is probably now the best and fastest was to reach a very large audience, to achieve my journalist goal: make noise, spread the idea that it is possible to work for space exploration without being a 45 years old engineer hidden in a lab, or to make it simple: promote our project and the Mars Society’s. The problem is, I don’t really master video editing, and even if I learn as fast as I can, I am not very productive, even if my efficiency increases every day. It is a pleasure to discover the tools we use to create quality projects, and I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a good video camera from a student association from my school, so that I am very well equipped. I now have already hours of work, and absolutely want to be able to release it before leaving, that is why I will have to lock me in for a couple of hours during the days to come.
At the same time, Xavier and Simon are writing a paper on emergency situations on Mars, and how to deal with it. Xavier is comparing it to sub diving, and Simon to alpinism. This is why, this afternoon, during a short EVA, in which I took part with both of them, after a quick engineering check, I was mandated to shoot new photos of them showing how to assist a victim, while being in EVA, to illustrate their explanations. I was also sent by Louis to test our Optinvent glasses. He was following me from inside the hab, using their video camera, and I was able to record my voice during key moments of the EVA, by using the accelerometer, triggered by a head movement.
Tomorrow, Simon would probably be able to deploy his atmospheric balloon, according to the meteo. This is why we planned a long EVA in the morning. At the same time, I will stay in the hab, filming my last missing shots, and editing our video.
Louis MANGIN, crew journalist MDRS 175