Crew 191 Journalism Reports

Journalist Report MDRS Crew 191 Venzha Christ 03.26.18 Many of us knew about "Dust Devils" on MARS Planet, right? - were first photographed by the Viking orbiters in the 1970s, then in 1997, the MARS Pathfinders lander detected a dust devil passing over it. Mission continue, the Spirit Rover on MARS reported on March 12, 2005, that a lucky encounter with a dust devil had cleaned the solar panels of that robot. From the definition ; "Dust" are fine particles of matter. It generally consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil, dust lifted by weather, volcanic eruptions, and pollution. We knew that, so we need to aware about the effect of the dust for our life and activities. Especially when we connected into many tools and equipment’s. On MARS as on Earth, Dust Devils are whirlwinds that result from sunshine warming the ground, prompting convective rising of air that has gained heat from the ground. Observations of Martian dust devils provide information about wind directions and interaction between the surface and the atmosphere. MARS is a very windy place, perhaps so windy then in fact, that bright, oxidized Martian soil is being scoured away by martian winds and dust devils to reveal darker, sub-surface soil with the end result of making the whole planet warmer. The winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 60 miles per hour, less than half the speed of some hurricane-force winds on Earth. Again - from the last data, (last year), on recent summer afternoons on MARS, navigation cameras aboard NASA’s Curiosity MARS rover observed several whirlwinds carrying Martian dust across Gale Crater. Entering the MDRS, its like go into a tent with full of specific attitude and "Dust", so we need to (once again) aware. "Cleaning" the tent was the one most important thing we should do immediately on the first day. The Asia Team : Makoto Kawamura, Kai Takeda, Fumiei Morisawa, Yusuke Murakami, Miho Tsukishiro, Venzha Christ and Wataru Okamoto are the Devils, haha... : a super team who always hungry about connecting new experience, doing innovative thing, and cooking up tons of technical information. Our mission, its not to reach for the maximum result, but more focus on reflection of sharing between others, to feel respect to our mother earth, to be sure that we stay in the right place, or "move" to create a new colony, and also to build more understanding about the connection between "human" and "universe". And we are : "THE GOOD DEVILS" from the DUST ! As our commander said that "We Can Not Control MARS" even the devils want to :-). So, in this mission we saw lots of dust, and we understand more that the dust NOT only bring a disaster for the colony, as Mark Lemmon at Texas A&M University in College Station said : “Dust on Mars kind of fills the role of water on Earth: it’s the most important driver of weather,” “Trying to understand how the dust gets into the atmosphere is key: you’re not going to get weather right if you don’t have that right.”

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