|  | Kathy Quinn and Vladimir with Inuit bear hunter, Joe Amaralik | |
Day 8 - Sunday 15 July
16 July 2001
Good news! We survived the Commander’s spaghetti sauce last night. However, instead of a video evening we had a very interesting battle with the power generator. Steve Braham, our Chief Engineer, was shuttling back and forth between the Habitat and the power generator trying to reset it each time it failed, i.e. about every 15 minutes. We nearly took bets on who was going to win but eventually adding some fuel did the trick.
Today we had our fourth Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), a three-person EVA that lasted two and a half hours. Commander Zubrin, Katy Quinn and myself went on a scouting expedition to try to find potential locations to deploy the geophone flute for our geophysics experiment.
We went to the Von Braun Planitia, which is not too far from the Habitat, although it took us 30 minutes to get there with the ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles) and we had to cross the river.
Altogether we found two potential locations that were not too muddy or covered by too many loose pebbles and rocks. Going on further we came to the end of the Von Braun Planitia and continued our exploration by crossing another river and trying to climb the ridge.
As Commander Zubrin left me to lead, as I am supposed to be the expert on assessing which place would be suitable, I first tried to go through the snow patch and the rocks but as the ATV was not in agreement it tried to kick me off. So we decided to turn back and return by a safer route.
| | View from the Habitat window | |
During the debriefing we discussed the merits and demerits of all the sites visited yesterday and today. It was agreed to perform the seismic experiment at one of the locations in the Haughton crater, the one between two little rivers at the bottom of a valley. Several reasons pushed us to that decision.
First, all the sites visited are either too muddy or too covered by loose rocks; second, all the area is mainly made of Dolomite (a sort of carbonate rock), so repeating the measurements that were done a few days ago in another area would not bring any new data; third, we could not find with any certainty any reference to pingos or ground ice in the Von Braun Planitia; fourth, accessibility by ATVs, with a trailer carrying 130 kg of instruments, is an important factor and currently the crater is more accessible than the surrounding area.
| | Kathy Quinn and Vladimir out scouting the terrain | |
Furthermore, the idea of measuring seismic data inside the crater is quite appealing as astronauts visiting Mars would also have to measure underground structures in craters on Mars. So tomorrow, we will go to the crater. We would like to conduct the measurements with two kinds of seismic sources: the sledge hammer and the thumper gun. It will be a long EVA expedition, certainly five hours or more.
As we could not watch a video last night we will watch one tonight. Guess what? It will be "Mars attacks" to keep us in the mood. So all in all everything is going well. Charles is cooking dinner tonight (rice with chili con carne) and we still have some Belgian chocolates. I am a little disappointed since so far we have not spotted a single polar bear but who knows, there are another two days of EVAs and expeditions to go, so let us hope.
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