This is simply the coldest temperature I have ever experienced.

You face feels pricked by a thousand needles when you walk outside – you quickly retreat, beaten by nature.  There is COPD/ Emphysema and asthma rolled up into one smooth toke with each breath.  The pressure is so low that you feel even shorter of Oxygen.

In fact, I am not sure I can ever describe what -91 degrees Celsius feels like.  Simply because, after a short sharp pinpricking second, it doesn’t feel – nothing feels and you feel nothing- your face looses its sensation.

I took a glove off… immediate pain with a tinkle of paraesthesia followed by nothing as your skin begins to freeze and the nerves become shutdown.

I think back to one of the purposes of our mission – to try to identify and find ways to overcome the challenges of living in such extreme climatic conditions and isolation, in relation to a future project planning to  send a manned mission to Mars.

The average temperature swings on Mars can be anything from a numbing 140 °K (-133 °C; -207 °F) at the Martian winter pole to a summery 300 °K (27 °C; 80 °F) during a typical martian summer’s day.

CONCLUSION: I am not sure if there is much difference in the time it takes to die in a Martian -133°C to our current -91°C.  But what I am sure of is that -91°C feels worse than bloody freezing.

If ‘Death’ was ever to be served at its ideal temperature in a gourmet restaurant in Paris, it would be served ‘a la -91°C’.

I am certain we are in for worse in the coming months.

My only question – “how low can it go?”