Journalist's Report

April 9, 2008

Guerric de Crombrugghe



Goooooooood morning, Earth! Hey, this is not a test! This is rock and
roll! Time to rock it from the red planet to Houston!

Today was a great day for our guys : lab, tests on samples, bacteria
culture, plane, nice EVA, etc!

Let's begin with the lab stuff. First of all, I tried to get another
salinity curve (resistance of distilled water in function of its
salinity), which appeared to be totally different from the first one.
Jan thinks that the measurement are not reliable because of the high
resistance. Ok! Time to find another way to measure salinity of our
samples. We thus elaborated something very complicated : 2 g of soil
sample in 20 ml of water, filtering, centrifuge, evaporation, weight of
the evaporated centrifuged filtered sample (normally only salt). We
were just beginning the centrifuge step when Céline found a salinity
meter. Great. Lesson of the day : the simple solution is easier than
the complicated one.
Meanwhile, Boris was making his plane. It seems to be great! We'll have
a lot of fun when it'll be finished.

After lunch, an EVA to remember. Boris, Elnaz an me went to a "Gypsium
field" which we couldn't find. Not a problem : we had a great time, and
we found another gypsium field. This place is amazing! We were riding
in a tiny little canyon, with the Sun setting ... Riders on the Sand.

The day ends with a chinese-japanese meal prepared by Céline and Jan.
"Life is beautiful", says Elnaz. Let's watch a movie on this wise
speech.

Bye now! Don't forget to do your homework!