HSO - Personal Martian Report:

• In addition to the HSO report, written at 20:00
• In addition to the EVA report, written just before
• In addition to the MedMars experiment report, to be written after that report

Today's focus was clearly the medical EVA, which originally started as an official geology excursion, but soon, after one hour of sample taking, turned "surprisingly" into a medical situation, as the XO "fell down" and broke an ankle. We activated the back-up team at the Hab, two more members of the flight crew to do an emergency donning, which takes only 20 minutes until egress from airlock (on the downside, there is no water attached, no medical monitoring attached and no pre-flight ultrasonic measurement, no aspirin taken before depressurization, no weight measurements, no triple-check of the air supply and similar things).

The rescue team also brought splinting material and drugs: but how can you administer a drug without puncturing the outer hull of the space suit? Our first idea was, to add the drug into the airstream, as there are already experimental analgesics which can be dispersed via the airstream of the intake manifolds. However, this turned out to be very difficult, as the activation mechanism is very hard to use with the pressurized gloves. Instead, we attached the placebo (lemon syrup) into the fluid intake, so by pressing the drug capsule against the plathapus joint, the fluid was easily dripping down the tube into the mouthpiece of the patient.

I hadn't told him, what I was using as a drug, I just mumbled something about "dear-XO, this-time-you'll-have-to-put-some-trust-in-your-paramedic", until I saw his corner of the mouth involuntarily go upwards and then a big smile on his face: the drug had reached its recipient.

Getting him up was comparably easy, but carrying with two mountaineering rescue slopes was a tedious and extremely exhaustive task: I doubt that the astronauts on a crewed Martian surface mission will have the muscular strength to carry another fully-suited patient, but at least we could show that without hardly any additional equipment it could be done – and that is exactly what we are doing here for some of our experiments: prove of concept.

Details about the medical experiment are currently written into the science reports which will be collected and studied later on in more detail as soon as time permits (post-flight).

HSO Report:

Hydration is a real challenge out here at the station: the crew is working hard, and sometimes, the EVA activities can cause a lot of physical stress, but at the same time the high spirits keep you from realising you're thirsty. Therefore it is one of the main activities of the HSO to make sure the Crew is hydrating enough. In addition, we are still keeping a close track on the fluid balancing, marking every milliliter of liquid that enters of leaves our bodies. In the morning, post-EVA and before bedtime, everyone takes urine samples to be analyzed later on in our labs back home in Austria: The research is -amongst other- focusing on stress hormones and other markers.

One of the station specific challenges from the safety point of view are the many wooden components, e.g. from the stairs to the tables etc. Most of us have already had their share of small wooden pieces punctuating the skin. Usually this poses no threat to one's health as long as there is an active Tetanus vaccination in place. But here, a reduced immune response due to stress and a microbiologically challenging environment raise the chance of getting small infections, so we have to keep these micro wounds very clean.

After yesterday's Yuri's Night "party" (which was a fantastic dinner with a lot of fun, great music at the command deck), we received our share of sleep and the crew spirit was considerably higher in the morning. Otherwise nothing else to report in detail.

Signing off yours truly,
Gernot Gröemer, HSO