FMARS Sponsors	Dispatch from FMARS Robert Zubrin - Thursday, July 12, 2002 The view out the porthole of the Flashline Station this morning, looking south towards Haughton Crater. We had planned today to perform a long distance motorized scouting EVA, but when we awoke it was snowing, and the wind was blowing hard. The snow in the air limited visibility, which would be made worse by snow landing on the spacesuit helmets. In addition, snow cover on the ground obscures all the interesting geology. As a result we decided to cancel today's EVA and spent the day at the station instead. We managed to get a good deal done. Nell and I spent the day upgrading the three remaining spacesuits to MDRS (our newer Mars desert station) standards. We also built wall-mounted racks for the radio battery recharging system. Markus replaced the scratched domes on two of the helmets with new ones. He also wrote a report to the Carnegie Institute on progress with the MASSE life detection experiment. Frank Eckardt and K. Mark Caviezel setting up the Met 1 weather station outside of Flashline Station late this afternoon. K. Mark and Frank broke sim to build and deploy a weather station which has been sponsored to the Mars Society by the Met One Company. It seemed rather complex when we took it out of the box, but Frank showed remarkable aptitude and ignoring the cryptic instructions that came with the unit, managed to assemble it in less than two hours. Then he and K. Mark deployed it about 200 feet from the hab out on Haynes Ridge. K. Mark did the programming, and as a result, the station is now fully functional and provides precise data on wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature. It's a very fine instrument, combining high quality hardware with superior design. It also features very low power consumption (25 milliamps) and multiple anchoring systems to allow you to cope with nearly any kind of ground. K. Mark is ecstatic about it. He calls it "a meteorologists' wet dream." Right now we can read the data real time on a panel we have installed in the FMARS hab. K. Mark is looking into setting up an interface with a ham satellite transmission system that will enable transmission of the data real time and throughout the winter. Emily MacDonald using JPL testing MISR program reflect- ance spectrometer outside on Devon Island. Emily assembled the Terra/MISR reflectance spectrometer JPL sent us. She operated it successfully first inside the hab, and then immediately outside (out of sim) obtaining reflectance spectra of the white standard, snow, rock, and water puddles. Now that we know we can work it, we are making plans to use it outside under simulation conditions when the Terra satellite is overhead. We have a schedule of the overpass times. We will do it first with pure samples, and then with mixed samples reflecting the actual ground types viewed by the satellite. The effect of these measurements will be to provide ground truth measurements for the orbiter, allowing improved exploration of the entire high Arctic. Shannon completed assembling her laboratory, which includes a terrific epifluorscent microscope sponsored to her by the Zeiss company and a molecular laboratory loaned by MJ Research. These instruments will be vital to her efforts to identify environmental bacteria. She also tested the water we have been drinking (drawn from the Lowell Canal and stored in plastic jerrycans) for coliform bacteria, and found it to be safe. The water system in the hab is now operational, and she has a test in the incubator to evaluate the water after it has been stored in the hab's storage tanks and run through our pipes. Results of these tests are expected tomorrow. Shannon, who is our health and safety officer, also did a general safety inspection of the hab and implemented a number of improvements. By mid afternoon the weather began to improve, and by evening most of the ground snow cover was gone, but this was too late to enable our planned EVA. We therefore plan to implement the long distance EVA across the Von Braun Planitia to scout the ridges and canyons to its north tomorrow. This excursion will be led by me and include Nell, Frank, and Shannon. Since we have the hab's running water system running, we made plans for warm sponge baths or navy showers for all crewmembers, as most of us have not bathed since Tuesday. Unfortunately the warm water heater appears to be reluctant to do its part. Therefore, as befits the Arctic, the baths will be cold. It's 10 PM now, and the sun is shining bright through clear skies. The chances of us pulling off our long distance EVA tomorrow appear excellent. I'm really looking forward to it.
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