FMARS Sponsors	Dispatch from FMARS Robert Zubrin - Monday, July 22, 2002 EVA-12 Report | Biology Report | Photo Gallery Crew watching Evolution I think I mentioned that the Russians brought vodka. Well, of all our remaining movies, the best one to appreciate with vodka was "Evolution," a screwy David Duchovny comedy about alien life forms evolving and propagating in the American southwest. I find this movie especially interesting, since I was part of a Mars Society scouting expedition searching for a location for our Mars Desert Research Station in the fall of 2000 which accidentally wandered onto the set. We had just put in a long day driving around northern Arizona when we pulled into the town of Page, only to find the place filled with US Army troops and hundreds of civilians stampeding down the main street in terror. This evoked some concern, until we noticed that the news crews filming the panic did not have CNN emblazoned upon their cameras. So we realized we were in the middle of a movie, but still had to make it through the fear-crazed mob to reach our restaurant. This took some pushing and shoving, but ultimately we were successful. If you ever watch that movie, and you see some determined people struggling their way through a path perpendicular to the main flow of the rabble fleeing Page, Arizona, you will know that is us. Anyway, the film goes very well with hard liquor, and we enjoyed it accordingly. The EVA today consisted of Frank, Emily and me, with K. Mark providing armed escort and the Russian film crew following us to get their footage. Our mission was to visit a large number of locations in and around the Von Braun Planitia and its surrounding hills and canyons to obtain rock samples for examination under the reflectance spectrometer back at the hab. The purpose of this is to obtain reflectance spectra for all the characteristic rock types here, thereby providing the data needed by the operators of the Terra satellite MISR instrument to know what they are looking at, not only here, but across much of the Canadian high Arctic. We accomplished this goal, acquiring all the samples needed to complete our Terra/MISR reflectance spectrometry ground truth program. We had to do a bit of hiking to do it though, which once again impressed on me the superiority of human explorers over robots, as the irregular canyon wall we climbed today would have been beyond the abilities of any robot yet built. We also set up our portable radio repeater on a hill flanking the plain, and used it intermittently as a test for our EVA tomorrow, which aims to travel 16 km from the station and which accordingly will need the repeater to stay in touch. Shannon in the lab. While we were out, Shannon Hinsa continuing her microbiology experiments in the Flashline Station lab. If there is life on Mars it likely could be bacteria or something closely related. If we can understand how bacteria can survive in this harsh environment we may gain some insight to how bacteria could survive in other places. Therefore Shannon is particularly interested in endolithic bacteria (bacteria that can live inside of rocks) and comparing these bacteria to other bacteria found here. So, on her EVAs, Shannon has collected and assortment of rocks, soil and water samples. Then, in the lab, she has cultured them and analyzed them by microscopy. She's cultured a wide range of gram positive and gram-negative bacteria and is currently investigating them further. Shannon has also isolated DNA from these samples and is attempting to use this DNA to identify the critters. This work is important because it is currently believed that only about one percent of environmental microbes are able to be cultured in the laboratory. So now Markus, Emily, and Shannon have all the samples they need to complete their research programs, and we still have several days left to us before we need to start pulling out. I therefore intend to make use of the time to do some very long-distance exploration EVAs, going much further than we have ever done before under simulation conditions. The plan for tomorrow is therefore a long range expedition performed in sim by Markus and me, traveling the full 16 kilometers from the hab to the sea. I've never been there before, in or out of sim, and the distance involved is fully twice the 8 kilometer distance record of any previous EVA. Because of the length of the trip and the increased danger of polar bears near the coast, we will have both K. Mark and Frank providing out of sim armed escort. That leaves one more ATV for Dimitri, the Russian TV cameraman. Frank has used his Landsat images to map out what looks like a passable route. We'll station the repeater on a hill halfway out to maintain communication with the hab. It's going to be a great adventure. The sea! Tomorrow we push for the sea!
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