Date and time: 30 April 2012
Written by: Haritina Mogosanu, Crew 118, Commander
"We bring the breath of life" - Kia Ora - from inside the Orion Spur at that time of the year when at night the centre of the galaxy slowly climbs onto the sky. There are roughly four billion stars in our galaxy (same number of neurones you can roughly find in four people's brains) and we live two thirds from its centre and one third from the edge. The hills on which our Hab landed formed one galactic rotation ago, the time that earthlings know as Jurassic. We can tell that from just looking at the landscape around us - we are surrounded by the beautiful red colours of the Morrison Formations. Earth was teeming with life then but it was a very different life to what we know today. Wind blew, water flowed, the Sun shone and somehow all that changed to layers of dust: strata...
... here we walk today on barren ancient land unveiled and transformed by the elements, learning how it all came together. We watch the lines carved by the water in the rock and recognise where life could have a niche. Here life fights back: you pick up a rock you find a hypolith, move just a bit further lichens take over through ancient shell beds that laid once on the bottom of the sea. There is hope for life, it is tougher than we think. But the strength of life consists in sticking together, forming ecosystems, many working as one.
Hop one planet, is there anything resembling to what we know? Just like engineering it's all about understanding the principle on which things work. Some people call this Planetary Science. It is remarkable how much we learned about planet Mars since we arrived here and only by looking at Planet Earth.
Who knows how Mars will look like in another galactic rotation? I sure hope it will have a bluish tint added to it. And it will surely take an entire planet to terraform another, an entire planet that will draw strength from the diversity of her people. Diversity is one of the biggest strengths we have, it's what made us survive and MDRS is one of those unique places that reveals this. Our crew found this out the good way, and the biggest reward of this rotation (our rotation) is how perfectly we adapted to work together and yet be so different.
Something about the sand around Muddy Creek today reminded me of my origin land, the finesse of it, the hues of the hills. And so upon my return I painted the flag of my mother country, Romania (my other country being New Zealand).
A project of Annalea, I might as well call it the flag therapy as I felt so good during the process!!
The idea came to her when she saw our expedition flag, the one with the Kiwi Warrior doing a wero - challenge. Then, the official New Zealand and Australian flags are already on our flight suits. The US flag is everywhere around the Hab. She encouraged Bruce to paint the Maori colours and herself and Don embedded the Aboriginal symbols into the expedition: the red Earth, the black of the people and the Sun at the centre. But the very first one she painted was the flag of MARS: RGB.
We go through life painting flags of things that matter to us. I feel very happy and lucky that MDRS's is one of mine, it also makes me feel a planetary citizen.
END OF TRANSMISSION
P.S.
Having no idea what this was, I called the ensemble: "The Cathedral and the Pyramid of sand"...
Just thought I'd mention it here ... it looked breathtaking...
ENDS.