Tiriganiaq (CREW 19) Sol 2 Report 16-7-2026

Our second day on sim was eventful in all the ways that real space travel is eventful – in matters both sacred and profane.

The sacred: Spacewalks, science, and teamwork. All five crew members participated in EVAs to complete the baseline activities for a psychological study conducted by Commander Trevor on behalf of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. Working in pairs, we donned space suits and exited the habitat through the airlock, simulating full depressurization each time. The experiment required each of us to exercise spatial reasoning and tactile logic under time pressure, which included the task of constructing a small structure from a provided schematic – no small feat in a full space suit! Then back into the airlock, repressurization, and inside to doff our suits and get back to the work of running this challenging, beloved habitat.

The profane: Waste management and (once again) teamwork. Space travel requires heroism, not just during EVAs. Today, our crew showed a different kind of heroism in the face of a problem universally faced by all humans: what to do with what we excrete. On Tallurutit/Devon Island as on Mars, it’s not so easy as flushing a toilet or dragging a trashcan to the curb to move the evidence of our bodies’ necessary functions downstream. Today our usual methods for handling our solid waste refused to cooperate, and we had to make creative use of our accumulated jack-of-all-trades skillsets to find workarounds that also worked with the sensitive and not-always-cooperative natural environment in which we are visitors. We will spare you the messy details, but it’s worth keeping in mind that anywhere humans go, our waste goes, too. That includes other planets. Best that we practice for it now.