It had been almost two weeks since they landed on Mars, three days since the life support system was named "New Virginia".
During this time, the New Virginia survey plans went quite smoothly. Even though they encountered a 17-hour sandstorm, it passed away without doing any harm.
In fact, Mars' atmosphere was a hundred times thinner than Earth, so a sandstorm itself was not particularly dangerous. What was dangerous was the electrostatic lightning that came with the sandstorms and the decline of sunlight. This prevented the solar-powered devices from getting enough energy.
However, this kind of event had already been taken into consideration by Space-X's Mars colonization project team. The life support system was equipped with a methane generator, which could replace the solar-powered devices to supply energy.
The first thing these colonists did after landing was to install lightning rods for their home, to prevent any possible accidents…