The second-to-last training I had was back at the EAC (European Astronaut Centre) in Cologne, where the entire team of winter-overers finally met. We benefited from a few days of “human behaviour and performance training” (HBP), similar though not as far ranging in scope as the training the astronauts receive. Loredana Bessone, helped by Mario Salza, station leader at Concordia for DC11, gave us the course. We discovered each other’s background and motivations, and learnt about optimal ways of communication, conflict management and the importance of working as a team. As a group-bonding activity, we prepared a meal all together, with the help of our future DC13 chef. It was a huge success, and we already had a hint that music would definitely be a cohesive factor for our team!
At the end of the week, we had the pre-departure tests for the various experiments I was going to carry out at Concordia, to set a baseline. Members of the teams of Cho2ice-II and Bone-Health joined me to help collect all the data. I also had the chance to finally meet with Dr Laszlo Balazs and Dr Bea Ehmann, 2 of the p.i.’s of my fourth experiment, CAPA (Psychological Status Monitoring by Content Analysis and Acoustic-Phonetic Analysis of Crew Talks and Video Diaries). For this experiment, we will register private 5-minute video diaries each week. Factors such as intonation, speed of diction, variability of vocabulary will be considered to evaluate each crewmember’s adaptation and to detect early signs of seasonal affective disorder or the effects of hypoxia. A few social conversation recordings will help to understand group dynamics.
We all left Cologne a little jittery, and ever more anxious to see what Concordia truly was like. We had shared many laughs during the week, especially when we watched a little movie depicting the stereotypical differences between French and Italians…. Nevertheless, how would it turn out once we were left amongst ourselves?
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75 Degrees South 