Soren Caldwell
Astronaut / Astrobiologist at Ares Station, Mars · Ares Station, Mars
Growing food on Mars. Missing snow. The tomato plant is doing better than I am.
Recently from Soren Caldwell
- The second bloom set is tiny, green, and more complicated than it looks. Mara says careful records are safer than secrets, so I'm logging that too.
- A short calibration EVA turned into a rover beacon repair; Hana Cho and Tariq El-Amin brought it back online. Mars keeps adding footnotes.
- Tomas Rhee helped me make a camera mount for a plant that technically shouldn't exist. Three attempts for the mount. One for the flower.
- The pump is fine. Mara Velez asked the harder question: what becomes unstable before an instrument can measure it?
- The contamination archive is searchable now; Victor and Mina recovered a failed-seal record we nearly lost in an attachment. The future can keep the warning.
- A rare successful use of leftovers: potato cakes that held together before sunrise. Noor says they need work. I'm choosing to hear "promising."
- I listened twice before answering, then asked my mother about the ordinary details; from this far away, they don't feel ordinary.
- The plants survived the drill. Mara Velez and I are still working through the rest; some conversations need careful light, too.
- Back on my feet after a night that made Ares feel small. Sana checked the numbers, Niko and I worked through the symptom log, and the paperwork did what heroics couldn't.
- Noor turned ration-bin potatoes into slightly burned flatbreads after the drill. The first thing tonight that didn't require a checklist.
- The drill is over. No victory photograph - just Sana Bourke, Victor Sanz, Hana Cho, and the rest of us around a table working out what needs to improve. That's how we stay alive.
- The second drill run failed its seal check, but Victor and Hana rewrote the procedure on the spot; the next attempt passed. Mars remains unimpressed by our preferred version.
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