Journalist Report by Victoria LaBarre

March 31st, 2017

The crew gathered around for breakfast, then half set out on an EVA to Candor Chasm. The crew out on EVA spent a long time in Candor, traveling along the bottom of the Chasm and up the cliff-side. The EVA Crew found a cave in the cliff-side and took note of large/long strata of gypsum along the bottom of Candor.

The second half of the crew spent most of the day cleaning and cooking. Our greenhouse officer’s project experienced a setback after he mistakenly connected the negative wire to the positive terminal and vice versa. This ended up melting his battery, and making it unusable.

The good news is that our health and safety officer’s clock still works and the half of the crew that went out on EVA used it to time their depressurization in the front door’s airlock.

The two crew members who built the robot went ahead and prepared the robot for travel and packed it back into the suitcase since the arm’s gear is broken completely.

After lunch, the second half of the crew, set out on a microbiologist EVA in which they collected soil samples from the Gypsum Fields, the area surrounding the Hab, the Cow Patty fields, Ancient Sand Dunes, and the Creek Bed. These samples will later be taken to a lab at McLennan Community College and stained to find bacterial colonies in hopes of finding the area of inhibition, and thereby discovering bacteria that may prove useful for developing antibiotics.

After dinner, the entire crew split up and cleaned the Hab. The crew vacuumed, mopped, windexed the windows, cleaned the shower and packed up all our projects and rooms. Dished were washed, the kitchen and stove were wiped down and our cook took inventory of the pantry.  All the trash was thrown out and the refrigerator was cleaned out.