Mission Day: 04

Day Four
 
Today it was business as usual in the Hab. What that translates to is we were all up  early to do our first brain health and performance assessment – most of us wake up between 6 and 6:30 am. Breakfast was set as usual for 8am and we have the usual, a choice of oatmeal or smoothies. While that might sound quite appealing do not forget that all of our food is freeze dried so... let’s just say food here is an energy source and not something one consumes for enjoyment.
 
The morning EVA team of Olav, Chad, Kent, and Michaela was getting ready for a trip out to collect photographs and samples for a NASA Goddard project in a nearby Lava Tube when the Hab alarm went off!
 
An email told us that a solar flare had been detected and that it was imperative that we get inside a lava tube as soon as possible for protection. Now, before anyone gets concerned this was a training activity which was a part of the simulation. Some of us suspect that maybe, just maybe, a maintenance crew needed to fix some of the Hab systems and we needed to be off the premises for that.
 
In any event, the whole crew make the trek to the Caradras Lava Tube and descended inside to wait out the solar flare. We did a bit of exploring but by luck we had brought the chocolate oat meal bars that we had made the day before and one of our iPads had a copy of Star Wars on it so there we were... our research crew, in a lava tube cave, watching Star Wars, in space suits. Now that, I believe, is a fairly unique experience.
 
After the warning was over, we made the trek back to the Hab and carried on with our regular scientific duties. In our case, this mean analysis of our EEG brain health and performance data. The big goal for today was to do a preliminary analysis of the entire groups data – we hope to have results posted for tomorrow. As the results are literally being processed now we do know that as a group we have replicated the SUVA dataset, so more validation that PEER and MUSE work to collect ERP data that can be analyzed to study brain health and performance!
 
 
 
 
Goodnight from Mars.
 
O. Krigolson
 
End of Report