Archives for: February 2006, 20
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Pre-Mission Update from Hugh S. Gregory T-Minus 5 Days
by Moonbase Team 
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Feb 19th, 2006 23:35PST
. . . . . this is Artemis Control.
We are now at the T-minus 5 days, 12 hours and 25 minutes until the Big Blue lander commences Powered Descent Initiation to ferry the Artemis One Crew to Hanksville Utah and the start of the Moon Society's first every Lunar Surface Excursion Simulation. At this time the team members are continuing their final preparations before launching off of Earth for their respective flights to SLC where Big Blue (our simulated Lunar Lander) awaits us.
William Fung-Schwarz, our crew RN began his mission preparation about a year ago...after his return from MDRS Crew 33. After a summer of data synthesis, literature review, contacting other human factors scientists, he was left with a 264-page draft of "the survey"...although the human factors survey is only one portion of the overall study (there are focus groups, activities, and interviews)...it is the central feature that the whole study rests upon. William has since put in about 4 months of revisions, additions, deletions, and a field trial...he submited the survey (and other study documents to the ethics committee at the University of Utah...called an "Institutional Review Board". This is a big step for a new investigator. The IRB was very friendly and helpful and he was awarded "approval" in about 3 weeks to continue. Currently he is now helping Laurel and Peter coordinate "cargo" requisition and purchasing for our mission as well as making some last minute modifications to the mechanical counter pressure (MoonSkin MCP) analogue suit that he will be trialing during our Moonbase mission.
Our Crew Engineer Steve Winikoff has been finalizing his studies on MDRS Engineering Systems and between this task and his regular day job, he has found time to research, design and impliement a web based "fill in the blanks" Crew Engineers daily report form. This is a long overdue improvement for documenting engineering activities at MDRS and FMARS and his efforts to standardise this reporting process is greatly appreciated by the Mars Society Engineering Team.
Ben Huset reports his pre-mission conditioning for the cold of the Lunar Nights is proceding well as is own astronomical observation schedule has him outside for many hours under the crisp, clear, sub-zero winter sky's. Ben is looking forward to further upgrading work on the MDRS web cam system and together with Hugh S. Gregory, will be tackling further upgrades and repairs to the Musk Observatory. Both Ben and Hugh are Astronomers on the Musk Observatory Team and Hugh is the Principle Investigator of Project MOSS, the Musk Observatory Supernova Search.
At this time all systems are Go on the Big Blue Lunar Transfer vehicle, currently docked at the Comfort Inn portion of the Selene Launching Complex awaiting our arrival and instruments show that systems on the Artemis Habitat are reported to be nominal with no major red flag events having occurred since the last telemetry session.
We will keep you posted as events unfold.
This is Artemis Control. . . . . . . .
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02/20/06 09:37:37 pm,