ESA flag floating on the Habitat

After breakfast we held a meeting with the members of the second rotation to discuss the meals and food that we need to take with us in the Habitat for the coming weeks. It is mainly non-perishable dried and canned food and not the salad, fruit and fresh vegetable type, but I suppose that a Mars expedition would go for that as well.

I tried, with the help of Patricia Garner an English young lady who plays ice-hockey and works at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, to contact the ESTEC host website, but unfortunately all contacts this morning were impossible because of a very slow and jammed satellite connection. To aggravate the matter, my PC laptop crashed in the attempt; we had been warned that the environment was very dusty and cold for computers.

Later, as the weather looked like it would stay nice for the rest of the day, we decided to have a dry run of the geophysics experiment. With Katy Quinn and Robert Zubrin I packed the three boxes on a trailer of an ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) and left base camp to go to Haynes Ridge, the plain in front of the Habitat.

The Habitat is actually located on the rim of the Haughton crater and from it you have a breathtaking view of the crater and the pale grey gravel that filled the crater after the meteorite impact 24 million years ago. The crater itself is a complicated circular structure with several inner circles, the largest having a diameter of about 20 km. The centre circle, visible from the Habitat, is about 2 km in diameter and the view is really magnificent and out of this world, with a lot of sharp rocks and colours ranging from brownish to dark grey, with patches of white snow.

Riding the ATVs is quite an adventure in itself. In order to preserve as far as possible the original and dramatic aspect of the landscape, several trails have been marked and we are requested to avoid leaving them. As the trail that we followed winds among the rocks, and crosses small rivers and patches of permanent snow, the second ATV got stuck in the snow and nearly flipped over in the river on the way back.  
 

Vladimir Pletser and Katy Quinn

We performed a dry run of the geophysics experiment and it took us longer than anticipated, about 2½ hours instead of the 1½ hours expected. Although we were not wearing the Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) suits, the cold wind on this bare plain made it so chilly that we had to keep our gloves on and protect our ears and heads.

However, we managed to set the line of 24 sensors perpendicular to the rim of the crater and to conduct the seismic tests using the sledge hammer. The idea behind this dry run was to assess if everything was functioning properly. The instrumentation lent by the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris functioned flawlessly and some first measurements have been obtained on the underground structure of the crater rim.

A first glance analysis already showed some asymmetry in the ground structure between the closest and farthest points from the crater rim, most likely due a larger compression of material close to the crater. This was an excellent first run that bodes well for the future experiments that we will be conducting during the EVAs from the Habitat in the coming week.

As this test took us most of the day, the rest of the afternoon was spent preparing for entering the Habitat. The simulation team changeover is still foreseen for 21:00 this evening. We have already packed our bags and we are looking forward to sleeping in the Habitat this evening.

The weather this evening is becoming cold and cloudy with some fog. It makes it very humid and everybody is putting on double layers of fleeces and jackets.

So, the next report will be from the Martian Habitat. While preparing mentally to be cut off from the rest of the world for a week (except for email), I’ll sign off with a bold "on to Mars".