MDRS Midpoint
Our simulated Mars mission has reached its midpoint. In my last post , I thought that the snowy conditions here at MDRS would be just a short term anomaly in our mission. However, after 4 consecutive days of snow, my crew and I are having to re-think the strategy for our mission. When humans go to Mars, they'll also have to contend with inclement weather. Dust storms in particular could halt or severely limit EVA operations for days or weeks at a time. Yesterday we decided to do an emergency rescue operations EVA . Carla and I spent the morning constructing a sled out of materials we found at the Hab. The wooden sled had two runners made of PVC pipe and a rope to pull it from a rover or by hand. While we were busy carpenters, Darrel and Luis re-built and installed the carburetor for one of our rovers, Kiri edited our first two YouTube videos , and Mike got the radio telescope software working. It was a productive morning. By lunchtime, we had a sled, a nearly operationa