Log Book for January 31, 2011
Commander's Report
Donna Viola Reporting
Today was our first full day in sim, so of course we had to start
things off on the right foot with the day’s designated chefs, Kevin
and myself, making a batch of banana/walnut/chocolate chip pancakes.
After that, it was off to the EVA room to prep for our first trip of
the day, where Heidi, Kevin, and I collected soil sample for our
primary microbial fuel cell experiment and several samples of
endolithic organisms for my own project, then stopped to take some
geology measurements on the way back. In the meantime, Andie taught
Sukrit how to work the EVA mission planner while Max worked on some
repairs on the microbial fuel cell.
After lunch, Andie and Sukrit set
off to climb Cougar Hill while testing the EVA mission planner. A very
brief EVA, with daylight still to burn, they requested permission to
embark on an ATV mission to the north with Heidi. High winds in the
late afternoon kept the engineers hard at work, and when the team
finally gathered back at the hab for the evening, the whistling winds
outside made us very glad that we were safely inside, not facing the
harsh Martian environment with naught but a spacesuit.
Dinner was
another adventure – the team was craving pizza, so Kevin and I found a
recipe for pizza dough using the bread machine. It was our first foray
into the world of cooking with freeze-dried ingredients, and though
the tomato powder sauce and “cheese blend” looked less than
appetizing, we plowed forward – to find that the baking sheets in the
kitchen don’t actually fit in the oven! After transferring the pizzas
to smaller trays, the final product looked less like an Italian
favorite and more like some strange breed of Martian that had wandered
onto our dinner plates - though the team was amicable about it and
still claimed that it tasted terrific.
All in all, a successful day on
Mars!