AustroMars Day 6: Spotlight on Alexander and Sissi

For Alexander, our first officer, this was definitely one of the most remarkable days, as he celebrated his 28th birthday, not in a classical way with family and friends, but three times with a bunch of Mars addicted space professionals and enthusiasts - his fellow AustroMars crewmates. And if that was not enough: he even celebrated it three times! First – as a surprise – at Blondies, when Blondie offered him an extra sweet dish with a little candle in it.

Then at the press conference, when the Austrian state secretary for science and innovation congratulated him deliberately and finally in the evening when he returned from another dress rehearsal EVA and his MDRS crew mates sang the birthday song for him. Loud but so enthusiastic, that every Martian in the close vicinity would have felt compelled to chime in.

The second major character of today was Sissi, our Mars Rover and the only female crew member in the AustroMars team. The rover is dubbed Sissi, in a somewhat funny reflection on empress Sissi, the wife of the Austrian emporer Franz-Joseph. Why would someone name a rover like an empress? Well, first of all Sissi was at her time reknown to be one of the most attractive woman – we believe that our rover is rather pretty too. Secondly Sissi was always on the move – we hope for the same for our rover, and that it will always find its way back to the base. Thirdly Sissi was all but an easy character – our rover is in no way different. Today I might have gotten some grey hair in trying to sort out a hardware problem with the power supply electronics. After communicating for several hours with the rover experts in Austria, we have at least identified the faulty module. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Sissi will be a good girl, and we can have her roam the Utah desert as of tomorrow...

Our other activies were centred on scouting out a terrain where our rover can conduct its first field test. Of course housekeeping was high-ranking on our daily activity list again, cleaning, fixing – all that it takes to keep the Habitat in good shape. As such we have fixed a window sealing, installed some battery terminals and continued with other activities in the lab area.

As it was lady’s day, Wendy - our power generator - made also an appearance and stopped working. We hope that she will behave well again as of tomorrow, but that is something that has to be sorted out among the crew, the Mars Society’s Engineering Team and our AustroMars flight engineers.

The day was finally concluded with a very nice dinner at a steak restaurant, which includes everyone from the crew beside of our photographer Andreas and me. Andreas will sort out his 2000 (!) photos that he has shot in the last 6 days, while I will keep on working with Sissi.

Signing off for today

Norbert Frischauf
Commander, MDRS Crew 48 "AustroMars"