Call it Flight Controller culture shock; living on Mars is different than the Space Station. We’re trying to find the right balance of staying in sim, communicating with mission support, and being self-sufficient. It’s taking a little bit of practice.
The space station orbits a mere 400km (250miles) above Earth so there is no appreciable time delay. Astronauts can literally pick up the phone and call for a pizza. It won’t be delivered, but they can still call. So if there’s a problem they’ll let us know and we’ll work on it while the science continues above. They don’t really have time to troubleshoot.
On Mars, not so much. With a 6 to 45 minute round trip time delay we’re on our own, so conversations must take place through email. We aren’t simulating this delay, but the email method remains. Onboard the Space Station the US crew and ground will get the occasional calls for question and answers, or to trade tidbits of information throughout the day while the Russians have full blown conversations. At the beginning and end of each day there is an all-inclusive summary. It’s quick, efficient, and totally dependent on mission control being available – which is why we’re there in the first place. We fly while they science.
But here at MDRS our comm window opens for only two hours a day, from 7pm to 9pm and all of those little tidbits and summaries take place at the same time. It’s a lot of back and forth information all at once. Several times I sent emails about issues before we had done any troubleshooting, mostly for situation awareness. Each time the polite reply was to please do the troubleshooting first and on our own. Whoa. I had also asked for a single email rather than a dozen, but the gracious volunteers who act as our CAPCOMs are spread out all over the place – so each message is packaged, sent, and replied to separately. Double whoa.
So I, and perhaps the astronauts who really do go to Mars, will need to change the way we think about communicating. Luckily NASA is already very much aware of this and ironically I’m even working on just such a project; one to help the astronauts become more self-sufficient as we prepare for our journey into deep space.
I think the public underestimates just how far away Mars is and how different it will be. But that is exactly why I am here today.
My friend and backpacking buddy Michael says that one of the best things about being out in the wilderness is setting up camp. Making a pocket of domesticity in the midst of whatever big country you are in. I agree.
And here we’ve set up camp. We’re a quarter of the way through our stay at MDRS and we have a routine. Fortunately, we didn’t have to build our shelter; it was waiting for us, as it would be in some mission plans, where rockets would send a habitat to Mars before the astronauts got there.
So what’s it like? A bit like living in a dorm if MIT had a campus near Gale Crater. A bit like a yurt with one poet and five engineers. It’s like living in a well-stocked grain elevator with windows. Or a trailer with IKEA cabinets and graffiti. A lab with bunks while music plays on a CD/tape deck that was used during the John Wesley Powell expedition.
You get the idea.
Mornings tend to be slow. Most of the crew are night owls—some folks stayed up till 1 a.m.—so I’m using my noise-cancelling headphones at bedtime. Last night was Bach’s Cello Suites and some Ambien. What will it take to live on Mars? Bach’s Cello Suites and Ambien. Actually, I’ve felt pretty relaxed. We get along well, and yesterday Kavya led a yoga session. Today I’m going to lead a guided body-scan meditation. I think such psychological and emotional self-care is in some respects more important than a space-suit.
So, mornings. Instant coffee, tea, some cereal, Peter in his robe, Josh heading downstairs to check on his plant growth experiments. Jorge was up not long after me and headed to his room to work on his computer. Kavya is working on her laptop too. Humberto is waiting for water to boil so he can have a hot shower-bath. (The water heater is out.) We tend to just get going, chat some and suddenly--
It’s lunch time and we’re planning the EVA and what will happen and what needs to be done ahead of time. Some of the equipment is in need of repair. Perhaps a foam ring under this helmet or some glue here and there. Lunch might be soup, leftover hashbrowns and dehy veg. The EVAs are the big afternoon focus. We all launch into a flurry of activity: getting jumpsuits on, testing rover signals, drinking water. Two people stay back at the Hab and are responsible for helping folks suit up. It takes several minutes and the backpacks (which cycle outside air into the helmets) while not super-heavy have taken a toll on folks’ backs. I think I said it before but it gives you a real appreciation of what pressurized suits must require from an astronaut. It’s hard work.
During the EVAs, we are in touch via walkie-talkies and try to maintain certain radio protocol to simulate actual terrain-to-habitat communications. Humberto and I were on Cap Comm yesterday, a bilingual affair—English and Spanish. No, tri-lingual, because the other language was hand signals to communicate if radios go out. Kavya and Jorge practiced with each other. The rover camera allowed Humberto and me to see them when they communicated in safety mime to us. When Josh and Peter returned from “Topher Outcrop” (thanks for naming it after me!) and “Picard Butte” to take spectrograph readings with a mobile instrument, they practiced hand signals with the other EVA group.
It was a challenge to keep up with the various chatter, especially when we had some choppy audio and visual signals. Kavya had to replace the rover camera battery at one point, getting a feel for how hard that kind of work is even though our gloves are thin compared to real spacesuit gloves. I screwed up the EVA group numbers a couple of times and resorted to calling them Picard Butte Group and Hand Signal Group. That was easier.
After an EVA, folks “depressurize” in the airlock, come in and take the helmets, backs and jumpsuits off. There’s a lot of conversation about how things went, and we formally debrief in the kitchen/common area (the bunks are upstairs too; we each have a narrow room). Downstairs is the small lab and engineering area, some storage and the shower and commode.
In the later afternoon, folks get busy writing reports on such things as the state of the Hab’s life-support and how the EVA went. We sit at a crescent-shaped desk against a wall or at a folding table; the chairs are thin padded affairs. Apparently, after we’re gone there will be some sprucing up. Some fresh paint, a pressurized water tank, that sort of thing. To do? There is a Greenhab report, a commander’s report, a health and safety report, not to mention just writing up one’s own work for future papers and presentations. As crew journalist, I can file earlier since my work is not necessarily tied to a specific activity. So that’s a luxury I have!
Then we veer into dinner time. Things come up. A fume smell. A cut finger. I made dehy eggs, “hash browns” (mush) and dehy sausage for dinner last night with Josh’s help. There’s dinner clean up. Water pumping and boiling. There’s the creak of the stairs as folks go down, come up. We joke about the dust. We putter, e-mail, plan, file reports. We scrounge in the cupboards for a snack, some dried fruit. We talk about friends and dreams and look at the portholes.
It gets dark. Peter and I can’t stay up for the movie. We need to get dinner earlier today so we can all be awake for a movie and for observatory time, which I’m more excited about. I can watch “Red Planet” and “Conquest of Space” anytime (though I want to watch both while here!)—the sky is tremendous. Last night I got up to pee and peered out a window and saw the summer Milky Way rising in the East, looking like a trail of rocket smoke.
Tonight I want to see some stars. And Mars, of course, big and orange and there.
Trabajar lejos de tu país, en mi caso lejos de mi Perú, suele ser un poco difícil por distintas razones como es el idioma, el clima diferente al acostumbrado, el extrañar a tus seres queridos, entre muchos otras razones; sin embargo, puede convertirse en una de las experiencias más gratificantes y más aún si junto a ti puedes ver a más peruanos dando el mismo esfuerzo por lograr muchos éxitos.
Tuve la oportunidad de estar en una tripulación netamente de peruanos en marzo del año pasado (la tripulación 126); y hoy, un año más tarde, ser parte de la tripulación 141 que lleva en su logo las 2 banderas, peruana y norteamericana, con el orgullo de estar trabajando junto a personas increíbles entre ellos dos peruanos y 4 norteamericanos.
Estas experiencias en lugares lejanos a tu hogar te hacen conocer personas totalmente diferentes a las que solías conocer y muy rápido te das cuenta que al volver ya no serás el mismo de antes porque te habrás convertido en una nueva persona con pensamientos nuevos, proyectos nuevos, ideas nuevas pero sobretodo con amigos nuevos que nunca olvidarás y te darás cuenta de que para conocer a estas personas increíbles y crecer como personas solo es posible si te atreves a asumir el reto.
Working away from your country, in my case away from Peru, is usually a bit difficult for various reasons such as language, unusual weather, missing your loved ones, among many others; however, it can become one of the most rewarding experiences and even more if you work together and see that other Peruvians giving the same effort to achieve many successes.
I had the opportunity to be in a distinctly Peruvian crew in March last year (crew 126); and now, a year later, be part of the crew 141 carrying on its logo 2 flags, Peruvian and American, with the pride of working with amazing people including 2 Peruvians and 4 Americans.
These experiences faraway from your home make you meet totally different people we used to know and very quickly you realize that when you return you are not the same as before because you have become a new person with new thoughts, new projects and new friends whom you will never forget and you also realize that to meet these amazing people and mature as a person is only possible if you dare to take the challenge.
Today I climbed a mountain. A real, steep, gravely, boulder strewn mountain. Josh coined it Picard Butte, and it's located about 700m north of the hab.
But we didn't just climb this mountain, we lugged a 60 pound 30 kilogram field spectrometer with us all the way to the top. At times we had to leapfrog the spectrometer up the slope between us - all the while hanging onto a mountaineering ax due to the crumbly nature of the ground. It was exhausting, exhilarating, and totally worth it.
Did I mention we had a laptop with us? And not the rugged kind either.
Josh, ever the scientist, had previously photographed the butte and areas between here and there with the rover and his camera. He marked out interesting places to do science that we would visit on our long trek today. He took spectra of various locations while I recorded the time and GPS coordinates. We gathered samples when possible and took a ton of pictures.
Dozens of meters below and nearly a kilometer away we watched as Kavya and Jorge practiced communicating with hand signals between each other and the little rover. Chris and Humberto stayed inside, acting as CAPCOM and controlling it via a live video feed. With minimal practice the hand signals proved to be extremely useful for communicating non-verbally and long distance. NASA friends take note, I'll be posting a guide to them so you can take a look and compare them with your own (which we have not looked at yet).
Due to a Mars Society restriction, we were were only allowed one ATV for our trek to the mountain, but we made it work and finished our EVA early despite our grueling list of objectives.
While unlikely to be implemented on Space Station EVAs, two teams of two, working on different objectives within eyesight of each other is proving to be an extremely efficient method to accomplish our tasks. And once our individual tasks are complete we can help each other.
So we'll finish up our mammoth EVA day with dinner and a movie. After we reentered the Hab Kavya and Chris walked us though some yoga, and it was a wonderful thing. This might seem goofy to people: "You should be doing science!" But if the people are are happy, the science is better, and our morale is excellent - despite there being dust everywhere.
Field Notes : Repair --at the Mars Desert Research Station, Crew 141, southern Utah
...the rocks are ringing, the rocks are ringing the mountains. --from a southern Paiute song
His robot spider clicks its black toes against the metal floor of the Engineering Bay. He puzzles circuits, the tool gleams.
Nothing is perfectly plumb. We shim the gaps with plans and bits of song. A logbook : "problem resolved."
Rocks here surged in river channels then rested for a long time. Not so long. Sunlight finds them. We do too. There's a road not far from here.
We go, scooting another lens to sandstone, blossoming a spectrograph, figuring the traverse
needs, next time, this other route. This is practice. This might just be. It is the balky wheel that
we make turn, the auger, a better spear, a linebreak marked with arrows, a chord that fills the Hab
during sun salutation. The heart rate's variable, like it's supposed to be, and Jurassic dunes that ring our sim are themselves
indifferent. Look, a lot of things have gone wrong. We admit that. Out there, we're speaking in mime,
refining gestures to explain the state we're in. The spider taps its feet only when we tell it. But we know the circuit's bigger.
The hand on the helmet means I'm Okay. The hand at the throat means No More. The arms waving mean Come Here. The hand passing before the visor means I Can't See. The hand on the helmet means I'm Okay.
-Christopher Cokinos Journalist and Writer-in-Residence
It might sound nerdy to most- but when engineers and scientists all excited about sending humans to mars are trying to solve ‘martian’ problems-it’s a beauty. That’s what happened at MDRS today, and in fact what happens here on “Two weeks of Mars –Earth”! A UND space studies student built a rover to compliment human Extra Vehicular Activity (EVAs) on Mars that would maximize the exploration activities on the planet alongside astronauts conducting planetary exploration. But how do we know it really works? Well, we need to test it in ‘Mars’ like environment with the marsonauts. Josh, who is a biologist and also makes for a great engineer for his instant problem solving techniques, thought it would be a good idea to bring the rover out to MDRS that his colleague built and test it out. This was an exciting moment for me when we teamed up at the Hab (habitat) to make these tests come together. We tried to fix the little guy (MACHO-MA Complimentary Human rOver) in the morning, and came up with some neat ideas. Being an engineer, MDRS is like being thrown in a candy store. We played with the rover inside the Hab first before coming up with the objectives for the EVA today-Ran it up through some small boulders, chair, and other obstacles. We fixed the housing to have better view of the electronics, built some mounts for the battery, antennas, transceiver etc. using scrap material in the Hab. We then moved on to test it outside on mars with me acting as the ‘marsonaut’ while Josh controlling the rover from inside using the video feed being transmitted from the rover. I tried my best to make use of this opportunity to learn, feel and contribute as much as I could. When the tires fell off the rover and I had to fix it , and when the housing had to be removed to check on electronics and connections- it was a tough task to perform with the gloves on (it is a well-known problem in the spacesuit world). We included hand signaling for communication which will be an important part of EVAs during loss of voice communication. We identified a few areas we can improve on and will be conducting more tests with the rover for stratigraphy and spectroscopy in the coming days and making improvements where needed.
On the other hand, I completed the first human factors assessment that I am performing teaming with Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), in fact with my previous crew member from MDRS, who is a Human Factors Professor at FIT. If there is one major hurdle to overcome for human planetary exploration involving months of exploration that would be the “human” aspect. I am curious to see how these two weeks affect each of us personally and professionally. It might not be equivalent to 2 years of living on Mars, but still a starting a point. Additionally, we will be performing EVA Rescue operations and procedures tests in the next two weeks teaming up with my colleague from Boeing.
This is just the beginning, there is more to learn about the red planet and more to innovate in order to successfully send humans to mars and bring them back ALIVE!
Josh and I stayed in the Hab this afternoon. He was cap-comm (we use walkie-talkies with the EVA crew) and I backed him up and did some housekeeping and note-taking too. We watched images from the rover camera—which was super-exciting. We both drove the little dude. The rover worked wonderfully till its main battery ran out, though the separate camera battery kept going. That high-tech complement to human presence on Mars contrasted to Jorge’s bike/handcart invention. He actually did ride the bike, and he, Peter and Humberto, reconfigured it into a wheelbarrow-like handcart, hauling a bag of sand meant to simulate an injured astronaut (or, you know, a lot of rocks). Both projects are important. The former can be used to do science near a human base without having to send astronauts out in suits, a process we have found even with our minimal equipment to be time-consuming and energy-draining. So a shout-out to Chris Follette, a grad student in space studies at the University of North Dakota. The rover—MACHO (Mars Complement Humanity Rover)—ran like a beauty. It really was cool seeing the images come across. Josh exclaimed several times during the test run. I did too.
And Jorge’s bike/cart worked just as well, proving that rugged low-tech has a place in surface exploration too. Testing a Martian handcart in the state where Mormons arrived by handcart? Priceless.
The whole EVA crew came back very happy with how the work went. The only negative was Humberto getting a bit of a swollen ankle (he is still healing from an injury from a few weeks ago). He’s resting up, and dinner is underway. Okay, I still need to do some flower identification and give y’all a little more background on the geology of Marstah (Mars + Utah). Till later.
-Christopher Cokinos Journalist and Writer-in-Residence