FMARS Sponsors	Dispatch from FMARS Robert Zubrin - Wednesday, July 24, 2002 Biology Report 7 | Biology Report 8 | Photo Gallery Refectance Spectrometer Report (Adobe Acrobat format) Irina and Robert on EVA. The weather here has deteriorated considerably. It is now cold, overcast, and snowing, with high winds. Consequently we only did one short EVA today down to the Lowell Canal to give the Russians some film footage. The EVA crew was Irina and I, and we spent most of the time wading through the water, with me answering her questions about the relationship between the search for water on Mars and the search for life. Her questions were good ones. Wherever we find liquid water on Earth, we find life. The fact that there were once large quantities of liquid water on Mars makes it a suspect for past life. The fact that there might be liquid water underground on Mars today opens the possibility that Martian life could yet be persisting, and the fact that huge amounts of ice - potential liquid water - is known to exist on Mars now makes it a possible site for a human civilization in the future. So we did our filming in the ice cold stream we call the Lowell Canal, after Percival Lowell, the 19th Century astronomer who thought he saw artificial waterways on Mars, and whose publications to that effect ignited the modern age's passion for the Red Planet. Lowell has received much derision for his mistaken conclusions; there certainly are no canals on Mars. Yet perhaps he saw more than those who deride him. Perhaps he saw what they missed; that Mars is not just a rock, but a world, a place that could support a civilization. Perhaps his observations were simply premature. Perhaps there are canals on the Mars of the future, wating there now to be brought into reality by the hand of man. Given the lousy weather, most of the work today was in the hab. Frank and Nell worked on a summary geology report, which we will transmit tomorrow. Shannon churned out biology reports, and was so successful in this noble endeavor that she overloaded our poor 2400 bps data system with her results. Emily finally pulled together the results of her MISR reflectance spectrometry program, which we also transmitted tonight. Robert and K.Mark working on wind turbine. With the science program of our crew now complete, the focus has shifted towards preparing for our pull out. Before we leave, we want to set up instruments here that will measure the weather and transmit the data back to Denver. The last crew here in 2001 attempted to set up such a station, comprising temperature and pressure measurements that would be transmitted back to the lower 48 by HF radio. Power was supplied by a battery, which was supposed to be kept charged by a wind turbine. However after a few ghostly signals were received in the late summer and early fall, nothing was ever heard from the unit again. When we arrived here at the beginning of this year's season, we found the unit physically intact, but the battery completely dead. The wind turbine was upright and spinning, but generating no power. K. Mark took the turbine down a few days ago, and found that the wires connecting the turbine to the power outlet cable were severed. This made the cause of the malfunction apparent, but the cure was less obvious, as the turbine unit was very tightly put together, making access to its interior to reconnect the power cable extremely difficult. So K. Mark and I spent most of the day working on this, and were ultimately successful. Then, while I was doing the afternoon EVA with Irina, K. Mark and Nell mounted the turbine back on its tower, where it is now generating power. If the rest of the radio transmitter system works, this could make possible transmission of weather data all winter by HF. However we have a back up. The Met 1 weather station donated to us by that fine company has its own data logger. It has a limited memory, but Markus dug into it and set the recording rate at its maximum spread of 1 hour between loggings. Managed this way, it can store all of its data for 210 days. This should be good enough to take it through the heart of the winter. So if the radio transmitted data does not get through, we will still get the information we and the manufacturer want about the most extreme weather experienced by the station and the functionality of the Met 1 instrument package under such conditions. Whole crew at dinner. Our plan is to pack tomorrow and pull out to Resolute on Friday. This will give us some margin to catch the planes scheduled to fly south on Saturday. Margin is very much to be desired in this affair, because the next planes out of Resolute won't be until the following Wednesday. We are going to need three Twin Otter flights to pull us all out. This can be quite a trick to manage in a single day, since to get a Twin Otter from Resolute to Devon requires three simultaneous unlikely conditions, to wit; good weather in Resolute, good weather on Devon, and the availability of a Twin Otter. Therefore if conditions for Friday continue to seem questionable, we may try to seize an opportunity to get an Otter flight out Thursday evening. If we do, we'll send out the European crew members first, as the consequences for them of missing the Saturday plane departing Resolute will be more severe. So, it may be that tonight is our last night with the complete crew in the hab. To celebrate, Nell and Shannon cooked a big dinner of scrambled eggs (from powder), bacon, potatoes, and onions. They also cooked fresh bread. A bread maker is a must for a Mars mission. Loaves packed at launch won't keep, and crackers get old. But bring some yeast, flour, and flavorings and you can have fresh bread for the entirety of a 2.5 year round trip to Mars. With luck, some of us will depart tomorrow. But if too many leave too soon, the remainder will be left short-handed. We've got a lot to do to prepare the hab for winter. The next 48 hours will be interesting. If the weather remains bad, they could become tense.
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