This is the complete log (both personal and official) of my time as crewmember of the Mars Society’s FMARS-10 crew. This is a massive post! I’ve included a table of contents to help navigate all of the material here. So, feel free to browse the contents, there’s a lot of writing there, I know. The personal entries are as written while I was there, so they are a bit raw, I would of course moderate them a bit for public consumption but that takes some of the color off.
During July and August 2005 I had the pleasure and honor to serve as part of the 10th crew to man the Mars Society’s Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS). For those unfamiliar with the Mars Society’s space exploration simulation efforts, the FMARS and a sister station in Utah, the Mars Desert Research Station, provide a base for scientists, engineers, and general space enthusiasts to simulate real space exploration. FMARS and MDRS serve as home during crew rotations, are designed to resemble a true Mars lander and habitat. The stations are operated to mimic protocols that Marsnauts would follow, and suits are worn during all science and exploration extra-vehicular activities (EVAs).
First, let me introduce you to the crew with this picture, from left to right:
Judd Reed- our commander and a fellow engineer, a veteran of FMARS-9
Myself- an aspiring hydrogeologist and raw recruit
Andy Wegner- a retired analytical chemist, and an MDRS veteran
Tiffany Vora- our crew XO (second in command), health and safety officer (HSO), and an aspiring molecular biologist, a veteran of two MDRS rotations
Stacy Sklar- an aspiring geologist, and a veteran of two MDRS rotations
Tiziana Trabucchi- an aspiring paleontologist, and a veteran of the “Mona Lisa” MDRS crew
I am going to discuss both the purpose and value, as I see it, of simulated exploration in a future post, but I wanted first to publish my personal account of my trip to FMARS as a crewmember of FMARS-10. I served as both the Crew Engineer and as its Hydrologist. Below is a timeline the trip with major events indicated and links to my personal journal entries as well as reports that I filed to our Mission Control. The reports I filed come in four types: 1) EVA report- this describes the EVA that was conducted during that day in very general terms, 2) Crew Narrative- a reflection on the events and simulation in general by a crew member, and 3) Science Report- these are the detailed write-ups that I did back at the station (which we called the Hab) about the science conducted during EVA, and 4) Engineering narrative- occasionally I wanted to write down some engineering work as well. Also, I’ve linked over to some photo highlights of the mission at Flickr.
Mission Timeline and Report Links
| Date | Major Event | Formal Reports | Personal Entry | Photos |
| July 8th | Leave Michigan | 2 | ||
| July 9th | Arrive Resolute Bay | 10 | ||
| July 10th | Prep. in Resolute | 1 | ||
| July 11th | Wait for Weather | “So Close…” | 11 | |
| July 12th | Fly To Devon Island | 15 | ||
| July 13th | Clean, Repair Hab | 1 | ||
| July 14th | Rest of Crew Arrives | 1 | ||
| July 15th | Begin Simulation | 1 | ||
| July 16th | First EVA | EVA | 1 | |
| July 17th | Day in the Hab | Crew, Science: Quickmud #1 | “Space Man Reporting” | 1 |
| July 18th | Get Stuck in the Mud | 2 | ||
| July 19th | Day in the Hab | “God Has A Sense of Humor” | ||
| July 20th | Snow on Space Day | 8 | ||
| July 21st | Fine Weather | Crew, Science: Quickmud #2 | 3 | |
| July 22nd | Build some Tools | “Interplanetary Update” | 3 | |
| July 23rd | Horifically Long EVA | EVA | 6 | |
| July 24th | Small EVA, Day in the Hab | EVA, Crew, Science: Quickmud #3 | “Weekend Update” | 2 |
| July 25th | Stream EVA, Tierney Arrives | EVA | 7 | |
| July 26th | Visit NASA Camp | Science: Stream Hydrology | ||
| July 27th | Day in the Hab | Science: Quickmud #4 | 1 | |
| July 28th | “Rescue” Oil Barrel | Engineering | “Another Update From Mars” |
8 |
| July 29th | Day in the Hab | Science: Quickmud #5 | ||
| July 30th | Longest distance EVA yet | Engineering | 3 | |
| July 31st | MER-Recreation EVA | EVA | 11 | |
| August 1st | Crewmember Simulated Rescue EVA | 5 | ||
| August 2nd | End sim, go for joyride | Crew, Science: MER-Recreation Imaging Report | 8 | |
| August 3rd | Clean Hab, prepare to depart | 5 | ||
| August 4th | Leave Devon Island | Final Crew Narrative | 5 | |
| August 5th | Final Day in Resolute Bay | 1 | ||
| August 6th | Leave Resolute Bay | 4 | ||
| August 7th | Arrive Back Home | “To the Bitter End” | 1 |
July 9th
I left Michigan around 4:00 in the afternoon. My wife and parents were at the airport to see me off.
July 10th
Today we flew from Ottawa (where we had to stop yesterday) to Resolute Bay. There, we are staying at the South Camp Inn while we prepare to fly over to Devon Island.
July 11th
The weather almost cleared today, and we nearly got off the ground on the airplane. But not quite, with the engines powered up on the runway, we turned around and headed back to the airport after hearing that there was fog over Devon Island.
Personal Journal: “So Close…”
So, I’m writing here from Resolute Bay. Unfortunately, I’m still here.
I got in Saturday evening after a nice long four plane rides: Grand Rapids-> Chicago, Chicago-> Ottawa, (Ottawa overnight), Ottawa->Iqaluit (ih - kahl - you - it), Iqaluit -> Resolute Bay. We busily spent Saturday preparing communications gear, food and cleaning the shotguns. I got to clean the shotguns because I’m the only one here that’s never been to either this Mars research station or the one in Utah. Plus, I volunteered, oh yeah, and I’m the youngest by several years. Anyway, that was fun, I got to use the pump action and scare people at the computers even though I didn’t even know where the ammo was. Then, I was immediately enmeshed in the effort to get our Iridium satellite data/voice phones working with our special email accounts for this mission. Much had been done already on that, and I was able to crank through it Saturday evening so we at least were online. Man, I hate Windows so much. Even worse, I had to work with Windows ME. Ugh. But, Iridium chose not to make their software for Mac OS, so I was stuck with what I had. Then, that evening our crew of six took a walk out around the Hamlet of Resolute at about 11:00 to see the Arctic scenery. Out we all went, and it was as bright as 4:00 in the afternoon at home. And the landscape is totally, utterly barren. Except where there are tiny patches of life. But they are so fleeting and fragile seeming that they disappear entirely from about 100 meters (I’m in metric now, this is Canada after all, remember to convert all my times to metric as well 
).
Sunday, we were supposed to leave at noon. However, the weather was foggy and cold all day, so we wouldn’t be destined to fly. However, the NASA folks managed to get 15 people out to the island. Apparently, their money is either better than ours, or they know the right people. Probably both. But, the day was spent productively. I learned how to drive an ATV, and instantly became the head mechanic because of my ME degree. Also, I was tasked to designing a wooden box, shelves, a plastic antenna mast or two, a wooden radio mast, a stretcher, two desks, a bridge, a wier and a table. Turns out that can be done with a few feet of PVC piping, about 80 feet each of 2×4 and 2×6s, and about 40 feet of 1×4 boards, plus a few other things (shit, I forgot to convert to metric for ya’ll, you’ll have to do it yourselves). Of course, all of said things will be quite janky when built. And, I came up with a wicked cool idea for an EVA (extra-vehicular activity), we will simulate in 1-day, about 80% of the science capability of the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity). I figure a good time to do that will be when the NYTimes reporter is here, and maybe we can put in a good word for manned space travel while we’re at it. Anyway, a bunch more communications gear work, plus some first aid training rounded out the day. Once again, 11:00, bright as day. It’s tough on the body.
Today, Monday, was similar (so far). We got some more First Aid training. I now know several things about splinting and head injuries, and major open-break wounds. Most of said things include: don’t move the person, don’t try to help them medically, just call the proper person and hold their hand so they stay awake. My stretcher design didn’t fly, unfortunately. But we borrowed one of those sweet Med-Evac stretcher baskets, so that’s even cooler. More comms crap, finally three computers work with the Iridiums. Then, we got word at about 4:00 that it was go time. We frantically brought everything to the airport, loaded everything into our very small planes, and got strapped in. The commander (Judd Reed) and I were in the first plane. There will be three more flights later today. We got out to the runway, turned around, and came back. There was fog at Devon Island. Damn it! So close! I even have smiling-before-take-off pictures. They’re great. I’ll have so more of those no doubt before we finally get over there. We came back to our funky Inn place (it’s the wierdest hotel ever, I promise. They provide room and board. Three wickedly delicious meals served in a cafeteria that’s about the size of a large dining room, and I think the proprietor lives here much of the time, as do half of the white community of Resolute), ate dinner, I snuck in a quick last-shower-on-Earth, and here I am. So, hopefully my next move will be to drive back to the airport, get on the plane and fly out. But we’ll have to see. We have all night to try though, it’s never dark here. So the word may come at 2:00 AM (oh-two-hundred canadian); I think I’ll sleep in my clothes.
July 12th
We finally made it over to Devon Island in the evening today. Judd and I flew over, the rest will come when the weather clears again.
July 13th
The crew didn’t arrive today, so Judd and I spent the whole day cleaning the Hab and preparing for everyone else.
July 14th
The rest of the crew arrived, so I made a nice dinner and we went out for a stroll around the rim of the crater.
July 15th
Today, we entered our simulation officially after preparing the Hab and ourselves for the coming weeks.
July 16th
Today saw the first EVA depart, and then turn around almost immediately because of bad weather.
EVA Narrative: EVA 1
It has been almost nine days since the first crew members began arriving in Resolute. Weather delays kept most of the crew away from Devon for too long, so after a brief sim-initiation ceremony last night, everyone was anxious to get the simulation going in earnest with a suited EVA. Our goal would be a survey marker at one of the corners Inuit sacred land in order to pinpoint its location. Along the way, we would investigate the phenomenon known as “quick mud” that has plagued so many FMARS crews in previous years. We spent the morning preparing ATVs and radios for our first in-sim EVA. We began suiting up at approximately 13:30. Various communications and suit adjustment issues needed to be resolved prior to hab departure, resulting in a total prep time on the order of 1 and 1/2 hours. However, the process went smoothly despite the delays. We think that we have developed a suiting-up protocol that can prevent unnecessary use of the Lab as further prep room space.
After the five-minute decompression in the airlock was complete, the three in-sim EVA crew members stepped outside for the first time on Devon Island Mars. We were greeted by a fog so thick that visibility was down to the many tens of meters. The EVA Commander, Andy Wegner, decided that we would proceed despite the very marginal weather. We proceeded slowly on our ATVs, descending the rim of the crater and traversing approximately 1/2 km before we pulled to a stop. The visibility in the crater was even worse. Our safety officer decided that, were a polar bear to approach, we would not have enough time to respond. Andy decided to turn back to the vicinity of the hab, abandoning our goal of reaching the survey marker.
Back at the hab, the EVA crew parked the ATVs and conferred on what to do in order to salvage the remainder of what was to be a three-hour EVA. Tizziana Trabucchi, one of the EVA scientists, suggested that though we couldn’t find the quick mud in great quantity near the hab, we could find some fantastic fossils that had been noticed prior to entering sim. With a new EVA objective, we set out on foot searching the ground for prime samples. Not long after this, the weather cleared to a visibility of several kilometers. We discussed returning to the original EVA objectives, but decided that if the fog could roll out so quickly, it could return just as fast, perhaps stranding the crew many kilometers from the hab. In agreement on this, we continued or search and after about 1 1/2 hours of fossil hunting, we turned back to the hab and concluded our first EVA.
Though we did not accomplish the three objectives we set out with, we did accomplish a fourth; we collected some prime fossil samples which Tizziana Trabucchi and Stacy Sklar are debating as I write this report. Having the second dedicated scientist on hand enabled a great deal of flexibility in a land where the weather demands just that. Because of this, the entire crew felt that this first EVA was a success, despite the poor weather. This kind of flexibility and diversity in scientific interests is vital to increasing science return in a land of uncertain terrain and climate.
July 17th
An EVA went out today to work around the Hab while I stayed in and did Engineering work and wrote reports. I also tried out the treadmill, it works nicely (although it makes quite a racket in our little spaceship).
Crew Narrative
Difficult arctic weather delayed the full crew arrival until Thursday evening, while two of the crew members, myself and the commander, Judd Reed, had flown in on Tuesday. We spent those two days re-commissioning the hab, generators and plumbing, cleaning the hab from top to bottom, and making various improvements to the staterooms. So when the crew finally flew to Devon from Resolute, the hab sparkled. Two crew members arrived on each of two Twin Otter flights into the landing strip. As they unloaded their gear, food and equipment, we welcomed the crew to a warm sanctuary from the cold arctic summer, and a warm meal. The delays in reaching the island reverberated through all of our science and engineering EVA objectives, however, and on Saturday when we were ready to conduct our first fully in-sim EVA, the entire crew was anxious. Final preparations and suit-up required most of the morning and part of the afternoon, and when the three members of the first EVA left the airlock, it was about 3:00 in the afternoon. We had a short driving EVA planned to scout the exact location of a survey marker that would tell us the boundaries of the Inuit sacred lands inside Houghton Crater. But, what confronted us outside the hab was fog so thick that a line of four ATVs could not remain in sight of each other. Because of this, we turned back to the hab but were able to conduct a pedestrian EVA searching for specific colonies of coral near the hab itself, and reentered two hours later, exhausted. Working in spacesuits, even simulated ones, is exhausting and challenging work. As an aside, being the only first-time Mars-sim crew member, I have been struck by how “realistic” our simulation really is. Despite the weather, the possibility of polar bears, and the Houghton Mars Project basecamp about 2 km away, the hab and this island look and feel like Mars.
With a partially successful EVA finally under our belts, the feelings in the hab over dinner were optimism and enthusiasm. We were all glad to finally have the mission underway. After EVA debrief, dinner and reporting back to Mission Support, we settled down for a Saturday evening movie. We chose a documentary on Apollo 11, 13, 15 and 16, covered the hab windows to simulate darkness, and relaxed. During the movie, it began to snow outside, and after a few hours had accumulated a white cover on all of the rocks and boulders around the hab. As I stood on the first floor of the hab looking out the workshop window, I was struck by how foreign a place even on our own planet can be. And, in the theme of the amateur poetic tendencies of our XO, Tiffany, I composed this haiku:
Daylight at midnight,
Snowcovered ground in July,
This is Devon Mars.
Science Report: Quickmud: Part 1, First Observations
The “quick mud” phenomenon has been widely encountered and documented on previous FMARS crews. It has seriously impeded the EVA scientists of previous crews as the tires of ATVs quickly sunk into the soft earth, requiring towing by sometimes two separate vehicles to in order to extricate the stuck vehicle and crew member. Quick mud is transient, seasonal, and is not predictably located. Basically, it is caused by simultaneous melting of permafrost and run-on of snowmelt, but not all locations meeting these two criteria exhibit the quick mud phenomenon. Part of my objective as a hydrologist here at FMARS is to better understand the formation, location and timing of quick mud phenomena, and help to develop a predictive capability that can be used in the field to aid safe traversing of potentially risky areas.
Our first out-of-sim EVA took us along the ridge, referred to by some as Haynes Ridge, to the southwest from the hab. We then descended along the slope of the crater rim towards the bottom. Along the way, our commander, Judd Reed, noticed that by standing in one spot and simply stomping for a few seconds, what appeared to be solid ground underwent liquefaction and rapidly became quick mud. This extremely simple in-field observation–not easy for a robotic rover, it might be noted–may have provided a vital key to understanding the danger of quick mud-prone terrain. In order to better document this process, using a digital camera I filmed a 30-second video of my foot stomping on a single spot. Within 10 seconds, previously solid ground began to flex underneath my boot. Within 30 seconds, an area nearly the size of my outstretched arms became liquified and moved as one mass when struck.
These extremely simple observations, conducted in less than a minute by a trained scientist have led to a basic theoretical framework for understanding the formation and evolution of quick mud throughout the FMARS field season. With continued observations, perhaps in the same location and most certainly in others, this theoretical framework can be revised and extended. Simple tools such as an improvised soil corer made from PVC pipe may aid understanding as well. These tools do not yet exist here at the hab, but using basic construction materials and equipment, the capabilities of a scientist in the field can be extended.
Personal Journal: “Space Man Reporting”
Since my last entry, I managed to get to Devon Island, become the crew Engineer, clean and prepare the hab (our station) for the four crew members who were stuck in Resolute two days longer than I was, and begin our first in-simulation EVA (extra-vehicular activity: that’s when we wear our spacesuits outside the hab). We ended up trying the flight to Devon Island again on Tuesday of last week, this time it took and we landed in a light rain on the very rough gravel airstrip about 1 km from the hab. NASA’s Houghton Mars Project is right next to the landing strip, so we aren’t really that far from other people, but we may as well be, we’ve not yet come near to talking to any of them, unfortunately. They somehow managed to get a Hummer here! Those bums…but they all stay in tents whereas we have an extremely comfortable permanent structure. Right now, as I’m writing this (12:46 AM), it’s snowing quite vigorously outside. Lest 12:46 AM make you think dark skies and night snowfalls, this is the arctic, so every time I look out one of the portholes it may as well be 9:00 AM.
Anyway, when our commander, Judd, and I arrived at the hab, it was cold, our gear was completely soaked because we had to ford a stream on our ATVs while pulling a trailer, we had no power, and the floors of the hab were wet from the leaks in the ceiling (no one bothered caulking the cracks between the dome-panels on the roof. With the rest of the crew stranded in Resolute because of poor weather, we had two full days of non- top cleaning and engineering to improve the state of the hab. We got little sleep, and worked our fingers to the bone, but when everyone else got here they all reacted by saying stuff like “Wow, this place is so clean!”, or “This lab area is so much nicer than I thought it would be.” I’ve joked a lot about the simulation that we are running, because after all I’m an adult pretending to be an astronaut. But don’t misunderstand, the station/hab is a fantastically good mockup of what NASA is planning for manned Mars missions, and our spacesuits really are pretty slick. We are simulating a good part of the experience of astronauts on another planet.
When everyone arrived on Thursday evening, I prepared a meal of chicken soup with dumplings that nicely set the tone for the food we’ve eaten. Our lunches and dinners have all been really tasty, even given our severe limitations on ranges of fresh ingredients. We were stocked with the wierdest provisions. We have at least four years’ worth of pasta, mashed potatoes and rice, so many granola bars that we’d have to consume them while we sleep, and nearly as many Pop-Tarts and can after can of corned beef. Who could possibly eat that much corned beef? Since then, we’ve been working round the clock to get ready for our simulation. Finally, just yesterday we went into simulation mode officially and started our first suited EVA. I was the lead scientist, which is not the person in charge, interestingly. We’ve got a very safety-conscious leadership here (two leaders, four non-leaders, a bit top-heavy, wouldn’t you say?) that places a very high weighting on reducing risks. It makes my job a bit harder I guess, but it really would be hard to see a polar bear coming at you while you’re in a spacesuit. I even calculated the distance that a polar bear could travel in 30 seconds if we weren’t vigilant about it, and it’s about 350 meters. So, while we were out on our EVA, the fog became so thick that we only had about 100 meters visibility ( I guess I’m converting to Canadian units now for y’ all). Which means, that’s right, a polar bear could sneak up on us at a dead run in 30*100/350=8.57 seconds. It takes me at least that long to run to the ATV and start it, so we turned back and aborted the EVA. But, when we got near the hab, the fog lifted completely. This place is so different, in almost every way, than any I’ve ever been. No obvious life, no darkness, snow in July, life-threatening creatures, and almost nobody around for 100 miles.
July 18th
Today we went on another EVA in an attempt to redo the first one that had turned around due to bad weather. We successfully made it to our target point but my ATV got stuck on the way back home. Read my personal journal account below.
July 19th
Personal Journal: “God Has A Sense of Humor”
That EVA (Extra-vehicular activity) we had scheduled for Saturday was rescheduled for Monday, in hopes that the blanket of fog would not descend on us two attempts in a row. We were lucky, it wasn’t foggy or rainy, probably because when it’s below 32 F the rain comes down solid instead. Either way, we got away from the hab no problem, it was easy cruising on the ATVs for a few minutes until we got to a muddy stream. There, we carefully chose the safest path, and then I led the way to see if we would get stuck in any mud. I volunteered to lead the way because our EVA leader (Red-leader BTW), is much older and therefore more cautious than I am. So, brazenly I forged ahead, and the others followed.
This might be a good time to note that one of my science objectives on this EVA was to study the mechanism that generates what we call “quick mud” (like quick-sand but mud instead) in order to better predict where it might be found at. The quick mud has been very troubling to previous crews because people tend to sink to their knees in it, stopped only by standing on a permanent base of either bedrock or permafrost underneath. ATVs don’t do much better, and often have needed to be towed out by more than one other vehicle.
Anyway, ignoring nice examples of my science objectives, we continued on to the main objective of the EVA: identifying and locating a survey marker indicating one corner of Inuit sacred land. We aren’t entitled to go onto this land because of a petty disagreement between a guy at NASA and the head of our organization (the Mars Society). So, if NASA’s camp radios overheard us talking and found us inside the sacred land that they’ve paid handsomely for a permit to enter, they would promptly fry our bacon on it. Isn’t that silly, I certainly thought so. We also have a phone line running from one camp to the other (they’re about 1.5 km away) that has no phone at our end. We eventually made it to the marker, despite the fact that one of our ATVs was only one-wheel-drive because the tire had fallen off that morning and it had been repaired using a tin can and a nail. We got there, recorded our coordinates, took some nice photos (which turned out poorly for me because my lens had drops of water on it, and I couldn’t wipe them off adequately with my spacesuit gloves), and turned around to head home.
I had decided that I didn’t need to stop for my science objectives given the poor state of one of our rides, so we would head straight home via our first course. We did that, and slightly deviated only once. We were back close to the hab, and the straightest course was not the course we’d taken out, we took the straight path. A few seconds later, our mission commander noticed we were riding three abreast instead of a straight line, at which point he got on the radios and told us that we were needlessly damaging a sensitive environment. The environment we were needlessly damaging was a beautiful hillslope of fine grained material filled with a sparse field of saxifrage–a pink and purple flowering plant. Plants here are tiny and widely spaced, but still we were not doing them any favors by making six tracks instead of two. Realizing that our commander was absolutely right, I slowed, turned my wheels to the left to get in his tracks, promptly sank eight inches into previously solid ground, and my engine died.
It wouldn’t restart, and I was still sinking. I hopped off the ATV to my right, and sank up to my shins. I hopped back on the ATV and then off again to the left, and sank only to my ankles. We had strapped two eight foot 2×10s on the back of my ATV (thankfully), which I untied as fast as I could and shoved under the front tires of the ATV. Another crew member made it over to help me, and we pulled the ATV and ourselves up onto the two boards. While still slowly sinking, we had a chance to think about what we were doing. Down the hillslope was a bit more stable ground, so we decided to try and make a run for it. We did so, and pushed the ATV down the slope at a dead run for about 25 meters. There, another crew member met us with his ATV. We hooked mine up to his with a rope, and he started pulling our ATV uphill towards truly solid ground. He made it about halfway up before his ATV flipped over backwards, landing perfectly upright. Amazingly unhurt, he got up and decided that maybe we should try something different. By this time, my ATV had sunk into the ground again, and again I shoved the boards under the wheels and stabilized things. We looked across the slope to our left and saw marginally stable ground to the left. Choosing to try and push the ATV rather than tow it again, we made for the ground to the left. All this time I’d been trying to restart the ATV, and while we were running to the left, the ATV started, the commander yelled “hop on!” and, at about 7 or 8 miles per hour I did just that–in my spacesuit and backpack, I’d dehelmeted earlier. I jumped on from the right, landed with my left foot still dangling in the air, nearly fell off onto my back, managed to climb on with all limbs intact, and drove like a bat out of hell to high ground across a small stream.
The whole ordeal was a bit frightening (when one crew member almost became padding for a falling ATV), frustrating (when the ATV sank back into the ground), exhilarating (when I finally got the damned thing started again), and exhausting (when I got back to the hab and could hardly make it up the stairs I realized I was tired). I was covered up to my shins in mud when we did get back, and my black spacesuit gloves were a whitish-brown color, my helmet streaked and caked with mud, and my backpack hung limply off one shoulder. But, I’d gotten to accomplish most of my science objective: I’d observed quick mud up close. Hence the title of this entry.
July 20th
Today I led an EVA north of the Hab. We made it a fair distance north when we were turned back due to terrible fog. We saw some interesting sights, though, including monuments NASA has constructed in honor of their fallen Columbia astronauts. Later in the day we got a snowstorm that blanketed the ground. Andy, Tiziana, and I went outside and had a snowball fight (in violation of sim. rules), and built a snowman. We also had guests! Visitors from NASA’s Houghton Mars Project came and we welcomed them into our hab. We found out later we shouldn’t have done that for personal disagreement reasons.
July 21st
We had a day of fine weather, and I spent most of it doing engineering and writing reports in the hab.
Crew Narrative
Between pea-soup fog, snowstorms, windstorms, cold long drizzles and glorious patches of sunshine, Devon Island has moodily welcomed us. The weather that has delayed our arrival, shortened our EVAs, and made misery from our engineering duties has finally abated–for today at least. But before it cleared, we got about 4 cm of dense, wet snow last night. Despite the cold arctic conditions, I am continuously amazed by this place. This is a land of ferocious beauty, of magnificent barren terrain amazingly populated by life. Perhaps Mars has this lesson for us as well; perhaps life will astound and surprise us all in its variety and perseverance. Also, the environment reminds us of how dependent we are on our technology: our generator keeps us warm and cooks our food, our ATVs transport us, and our Hab shelters us. This technological dependence will be all the more acute on Mars where a suit failure can be fatal rather than merely annoying. There, engineers and scientists will exist symbiotically and in complete dependence on one another. These preliminary lessons will be augmented and reinforced throughout our mission, and it is primarily for these reasons that MARS research is so absolutely essential to eventual successful exploration of another world.
Science Report: Quickmud: Part 2, Landforms
This report is part 2 in what will eventually be a 5 part report. Parts 3, 4, and 5 will detail the core sampling results from quick mud locations, a basic conceptual model of how quick mud forms and evolves, and finally a set of simple guidelines for avoiding dangerous quick mud while on EVA and a recommendation for further research. This report continues on the observations made in my previous science report on quick mud (7/17/05). I’ve added two additional days’ worth of ‘3rd gear’ observations during rover EVAs along with one inadvertent physical encounter with very liquid quick mud to those observations made in that report. Along with a little help from our Remote Science Team (RST) and a resource book brought by a fellow crew member, I’ve fleshed out a basic understanding of how landforms, soil particle size, and slope are associated with quick mud.
Soil-matrix ice freeze and melt are major active processes of landscape change across much of the arctic. Such seasonal freeze and melt of water occurs in the active zone of the soil. The active zone merely refers to the soil between the surface and above the permafrost where the water does not melt in an average season. This annual cycle creates some very unique phenomena similar to many observed and noted on Mars for the last several decades. So-called ‘patterned-ground’ features are characterized by polygonal or linear structure and are come in many different varieties, yet they are all fundamentally caused by the behavior of water and ice during the spring-fall months. Up here on Devon Island, not all of the patterned-ground types are observed because of the relatively continuous permafrost layer. However, some particularly interesting landforms I have observed are sand and mud boils, felsenmeer (german for ‘sea of rocks’), and rock stripes, all of which are related to quick mud presence and severity. I won’t go into the details of each landform in this report, but understanding the types of landform encountered during an EVA can greatly enhance awareness of quick mud risk in the field.
The hab is located on highly-eroded rim of an ancient crater, Haughton Crater. Along this rim within several hundred meters of the hab are at least three distinct landform types: felsenmeer upon which the hab is located, rock stripes on oozing masses of soil known as gelifluction lobes, and sand boils between polygonal networks of larger angular rocks. The felsenmeer sections of the rim appear to be the result of a high concentration of large rocks relative to the amount of sand, silt or clay within the soil. Sand boils arise when the rock fraction decreases, but the soil particles are sand sized. Some sand boils have extremely well developed polygonal networks between them, others have weak networks. This, too, is because of a difference in rock fraction; the more rocks in a soil, the better developed the polygonal networks are. One way to envision this process is shown below:
Rock Fraction:
0 ——> 100
Landform:
Sand plains–>Lumpy sand boils–>Sand boils with polygonal rock edges–>Felsenmeer
Just inside the rim of the crater from the hab, the soils are nearly totally fine-grained silt to clay sizes rather than sand. This is due to mechanical transport of finer-grained materials into the crater from the rim from snowmelt, or due to bulk soil movement by gelifluction. The model of landform relationships depicted prior to this paragraph applies to the finer silt and clay soils as well, however the sand plains and sand boils of the rim become mud plains and mud boils in wet weather.
Another key factor in where landforms are present is the slope of the land itself. Sand or mud plains, when situated on slopes, can become gelifluction lobes, oozing over totally different types of landforms yet still presenting quick mud hazards. Sand boils that occur on slopes often become rock-striped terrain, and sloped felsenmeer can become rock moguls. The landform types are all closely related, and the distinctions between them are often unclear. Thus, the risk of quick mud presence is itself a continuum, with mud plains presenting the highest risk, and large-rock felsenmeer exhibiting no risk. Though not yet described, slope plays a role in quick mud formation as well. The following diagram is a conceptual model of the linkage between landform, topography, soil particle size and quick mud risk.
Figure Caption: The color gradient depicts the continuum of quick mud risk between high and low. The axes on the cube are labeled, and the arrow indicates the direction of the increase in each axis property. The labels within the cube are the different types of landforms that occur at the loci of the three different axes properties. Thus, landform type can be used as a proxy for quick mud risk.
Part 3 of this report will detail the core samples taken in the field of quick mud prone areas. These core samples will be used to confirm the relationships presented in the figure above by obtaining core from as many combinations of particle size, slope and rock fraction as possible.
July 22nd
Today I went on a short EVA and then built some tools for me to use the next day on EVA.
Personal Journal: “Interplanetary Update”
Yesterday (Thursday) was my 14th day up in the arctic, and the seventh of our Martian simulation. Since my quick mud incident a few days ago, I’ve made a lot of headway in understanding where quick mud is found and why. Amazingly, feeling the stuff with my boots really helped to understand how it comes about. I’ve broken my science reports on it into a five part series, of which two should now be posted.
Wednesday night was really interesting. Horrible weather had caused us to abort an EVA for the day. We got about 30 minutes out from the Hab and fog descended on us like a great white night. Our visibility made it about a 5 second bear-run (see previous entry), so as EVA leader, I called the group back to lower ground. At about 6 o’clock is started to snow, and it snowed about 2 inches of wet, dense stuff. When 8 o’clock rolled around, we decided we had to go our and take pictures, so we did. That rapidly degenerated into a snowball fight, which then became a snowman construction time. Just as we were choosing a site for our snowman, three aliens walked up to us.
The first one I recognized as he is quite well known in the field of arctic Mars analog research. Pascal Lee, of NASA and the SETI Institute, was key to the founding of the FMARS station. He was accompanied by someone I believe is named Jean-Marc P****** from the Canadian Space Agency (he’s French-Canadian, so his lovely French accent was hard for my midwestern ears to parse), and Bryan Glass from NASA Ames. We invited them into our hab, and we chatted for about 20 minutes. They are all on the island, along with 31 other people with the Houghton Mars Project, a joint NASA-SETI project to test all kinds of exploration science intended for Mars while here at home. The HMP camp is within sight of ours, and I’d been dying to go over and meet them all. Glass is working on a drill project that may go to Mars in 2011. I really would like to talk with him more, since this is a project right up my hydrogeological alley. P****** is the Chief Flight Surgeon of the CSA and is up here to conduct a telemedicine experiment using some of the same tools that are currently up on the ISS. And Lee is simply doing the geology and running the HMP. Their field season is longer than ours, and they have way more resources than we do. But, we have a solid structure and hot showers every three days or so. I’ll bet their jealous! Oh, except that they have a modified Hummer on the island, which rumor says they had to get hear by ship and then drive across the countryside. They got stuck twice while in our view the other day, but their bad-ass motorized winch got them out. Our ATVs have no motorized winch, thus we had to pull ourselves out of the mud.
They left after about 20 minutes, they had a talk to go to back at their camp. We decided to proceed with our snowman building, and put together the ugliest snowman that the world has ever seen. It was nearly half rock; we had to cover it with white snow just to be able to look at it without cringing. It listed about 15 degrees to the left, and backwards. It had rebar arms, with M&M eyes and mouth that began to melt and ooze nasty colors over its misshapen face. Its carrot nose hung askew, completing the ghastly picture. We loved it! I got some great pictures of our July 20th snowman. Has anyone else ever built a snowman while simulating a Mars mission? I don ’t think so. That quasimodo of an ice creature represents a real breakthrough; or at least a fun time. Later, the sun broke through, and one of our crew members, Tiziana, captured the gorgeous scene shown in Thursday’s picture of the day on the FMARS website. We were blessed with sunshine yesterday, and more this morning, so hopefully the mud will dry, and our EVAs can last as long as they need to.
July 23rd
Today’s EVA was vicious. It took us altogether I think 7 1/2 hours. Andy and I slogged through mud for almost an hour each way. Read the report below.
EVA Narrative: EVAs 9 and 10
Today’s two-part EVA 10.8 and 10.9 was a team effort; the safety office (Andy Wegner) from 10.9 would play the role of a human radio repeater for the much further south EVA 10.8. To accomplish this, he positioned himself atop a nice tall hill, and heroically performed his job for 6 straight hours. While he examined in minute detail the life and geology of that hill-top, I examined the biology, geology, hydrology and cryology down below. Our location, south of ‘Trinity Lake’ near a possible hydrothermal vent structure identified by previous FMARS crews proved to be a bounty in all of those sciences.
Our EVA was a pedestrian one. We walked approximately 4 km to our site from the Hab. The terrain was relatively smooth, however the ground was soft and muddy the entire way. We learned to traverse the terrain by hopping between large rocks or following trails of smaller ones (the reasons for this I am in the process of detailing in my series of quick mud reports). It was exhausting work, the trek there and back took about an hour each way. Along the route, I tested two tools that I had built the day before in our workshop downstairs: a permafrost depth probe and a quick mud core sampler. The permafrost depth probe is a round wooden rod marked every 10 cm that, when pushed into soft earth, marks the depth to which it can be pushed, which in muddy terrains is the permafrost layer itself. The quick mud corer consists of sections of 2” PVC pipe sharpened at one end with sample ports drilled and milled into the side. Both tools performed splendidly, the results of their performance will be detailed in a soon-coming science report (part 3 of 5 on quick mud).
While in the field, I could not help but notice the immense variety of life, though I am no trained biologists. There were several different types of moss, four or five colors of lichen, three or four different flowering plants, and even what looked to be a mostly-consumed carcass of an arctic hare. Additionally, an interesting dike-like feature, shaped in a large V towards the center of the impact crater, provided a geologist’s delight of minerals. Cauliflower-shaped calcium carbonate deposits lined the underside of rusting chert-like minerals. Some of these carbonate deposits were surprisingly fragile and beautiful.
The last science portion of EVA 10.9 was an examination of a ‘Trinity Lake.’ It appears to exist solely because of a large snowpack that it undercuts. Giant blocks of snow and few-year-old ice lined one edge of the lake, sometimes having tumbled into the shallow lake. Any one of these chunks was the size of a large vehicle, such as the Houghton Mars Project modified Humvee parked nearby. Yes, we are not alone on this island. Our companions are working for the same goal as we are: Mars exploration. Taking care to avoid their camp on one end of the lake, I skirted one shoreline and headed for home.
July 24th
Today we spent the day cleaning the Hab for the arrival of John Tierney, a columnist for the New York Times. I also went on a short EVA to install a water supply gauge.
EVA Narrative: EVA 11
Today’s quick EVA was intended to install a newly fashioned water height gauge, known in hydrology as a staff gauge, in our water supply stream (sometimes referred to as Lowell Canal). A staff gauge is simply a vertically-oriented staff marked at regular intervals (in this case, 1 cm intervals) from which the height of the water is read. By measuring the amount of water flowing through the stream, and then reading the gauge height at the same time, a calibration can be developed that gives how much water is flowing through the stream simply by reading the height of the gauge.
This type of science, though probably not directly applicable to Mars until, and if, it were terraformed, is still a good analog to the type of characterization a crew would need to do of its water supply. Here, on Devon Island, it is desirable to understand the amount of water flowing through Lowell Canal in case harmful levels of contaminants were detected at low stream levels. This way, instead of testing stream contaminant concentrations each time water is taken, one could just take a gauge height reading and then be reasonably assured of its safety. Alternatively, were our FMARS base to be expanded to handle more than the six or seven crew normally present, we would need to understand if our small stream could supply this water. A real Mars base would do the same with its water supply (perhaps buried ice, or even deep sub-permafrost aquifers) to know how large it could afford to grow.
Today’s EVA was very successful; both objectives were accomplished in fewer than 15 minutes. Now, each time the stream is visited either while on in-sim EVAs or during water runs, the gauge height reading will be taken and a will give us a better understanding of our little Lowell Canal. Here on Earth, these readings will also give us additional information about the sources of water to the stream, telling us how much of the flow comes directly from melting snow or, alternatively, from snowmelt that has passed through the soil before entering the stream.
Crew Narrative
Just over one month passed between the funding and commencement of this mission. The crew is made up nearly entirely of scientists, and we all had objectives when coming in. But, on the ground, the land was both more structured and more chaotic than any of us imagined it. The crater has been described as “badly eroded” by previous researchers, but what this qualitative description means until one reaches the site is not obvious. The clearest it can be explained is that it was not recognized as a crater until seen from the air many years after its discovery. We all had science objectives related to this crater; after all, what could be a better terrain analog for Mars? But, of course, upon reaching our crater, some of those objectives changed and solidified, and the science that results has been strong and interesting because of the flexibility of the crew. We then publish our sometimes-preliminary results as daily science reports, and our Remote Science Team (RST) comments on them, providing us with the same kind of science experience we would find on Mars.
The constant tension between field and lab work, and then sending this back to our Mission Support on Earth, requires reporting on only partially-completed science. This forces us to share our thoughts in ways that we are not experienced doing; indeed, because we must put our ideas to pen and paper long before we would normally do in our labs back at home, we could be exposing ourselves to that most-dreaded of maladies in science: being wrong. Mars rovers are never wrong, they observe and report blindly. In contrast, Mars scientists will observe, make hypothesis, follow dead-end leads, have brilliant insights, report these to home, be second-guessed or supported by Terran scientists, and will go out the next day and do it again. This science-cum-exploration makes some uncomfortable, but it will blaze trails to be followed and smoothed as Martian exploration continues.
In a previous crew narrative (7/21/05), I mentioned the important role that engineers will play in Martian exploration. Here I would like to suggest that the scientists most suited for those early initial missions are not those whom will gather samples for weeks and months, painstakingly analyze them and then report out in a peer-reviewed journal several months later. Instead, it should be those scientists not afraid to be wrong; those that will form and abandon hypotheses as the data and analysis dictate. They cannot be those that define their status in the field by their strict adherence to procedure, but instead by their willingness to find and explore the big questions. For when the first crew lands on Mars, there will be 400+ days worth of big questions that Mission Support has prepared for them, but those may prove to be utterly irrelevant the second that their landing craft touches down on that red soil.
Science Report: Quickmud: Part 3, Sampling Results
On EVA 10.9, I brought my newly-fashioned quick mud corer and permafrost probe (see the picture below) into the field in order to get some below-ground composition information about quick mud. EVA 10.9 took a route across four separate quick-mud environments: gelifluction lobes, sand/mud boil plains (sometimes gently sloping), rock-striped terrain, and fluvial lowlands. I will describe the coring results for each of these environments in turn, and then discuss briefly the results obtained from the permafrost probe. Nine core samples, as well as permafrost depths, were obtained during EVA 10.9.
Gelifluction Lobes:
Gelifluction lobes are large (observed between 5 and 50 meters in length) oozing mounds of rock and soil. They are observed to ooze gradually down slopes between approximately 5 and 15% due to annual freeze and thaw. Quick mud in two different such lobes were cored, and all were relatively heterogeneous mixtures of silty sand and small (1-3 cm) pebbles. Larger rocks are sorted to the aprons of these lobes. These data are interpreted to indicate that larger rocks are heaved down-slope of the lobes faster than they are overtaken by its gradual ooze. Closer observations to confirm this hypothesis would attempt to correlate largest pebble size within the lobe to the slope down which it is oozing.
Sand/Mud Boil Plains:
Often simply referred to generally as “frost boils”, this form of polygonally-patterned ground are the most common polygonal landform in the Hab vicinity. As discussed in part 2 of this report, they exhibit a variety of sizes, strengths of polygon network, and degree of sorting of particle sizes within the boils based on their rock fraction (as well as how this fraction is partitioned; a boil with a 25% rock fraction of very large stones would look quite different from one with a mixture of very large stones and smaller pebbles). Three of these were cored, and all exhibited the same pattern: the surface was the only location where particles larger than pebble size occurred. The convective action that forms these boils forces all larger pebbles to the surface, and eventually to the polygon networks surrounding them. Because of the near-total lack of larger particles within the boils, the quick mud in these terrains is qualitatively more “quick” than in the gelifluction lobes. However, the polygon networks around these areas make them significantly more traversable in some cases; I will go into detail on this in Part 5. Interestingly, it should be noted that the polygons surrounding the boils, as well as the rock stripes discussed below, exhibit a fining-downward sequence. The largest rocks are on the surface of these polygons, and excavation reveals smaller and smaller stones.
Rock-Striped Terrain:
Recalling the model of terrain development discussed in Part 2 of this report, rock striped terrain are simply the sloped version of frost boil plains. This can be envisioned as a gradual statistical redistribution of larger rocks to the edges of the boil as it moves downslope. Eventually, the rocks have been virtually all shifted to these rock stripes, leaving a terrain alternating between rock bands and sand/mud bands. The stripes often converge, making them mistakable (and vice-versa) for surface drainage features. Two core samples were taken in these types of terrain, revealing nearly identical results to those discussed in the sand/mud boil section above; if there are rocks in the sand/mud stripes, they occur only on the surface.
Fluvial Lowlands:
Quick mud occurs in fluvial environments, but because of the fining-upward tendency of streams, and the correlated tendency of water to remove fine particles more efficiently than coarse ones, the quick mud occurs much more frequently on gentle slopes and in lowlands than on higher slopes because of the higher fraction of fine-grained particles. Two fluvial lowland features were cored. Each exhibited a heterogeneous mixture of rocks of nearly all sizes. Though larger rocks tended to accumulate at the surface, the dynamic tension between the fining upward tendencies of the streams and fining downward tendencies of the active zone beneath them serves to constantly mix the soil. The exact unstable point that is reached during a given period is a function primarily of the composition and slope of the land, the temperature of the soil, and the amount of discharge available to the stream. Lowland features exhibit quick mud behavior, but are perhaps not actually quick mud (the definition of which I will try to expand upon in Part 4). Instead they may be the same very soft sediment that occurs on stream beds the world over. However, for the purposes of improving ATV navigation, the fact that they behave similarly to quick mud means we must treat them similarly.
Permafrost Probe Results:
The 10 locations sampled with the permafrost probe revealed some remarkable, if not unexpected, results. Both fluvial lowland features yielded unreliable depths because of the presence of large rocks, but the other 7 depths showed an strong correlation with only one factor: the compass direction normal to the slope of the hill upon which the feature is located. In other words, if I were to stick the permafrost probe in the ground so that it was perpendicular to the ground, and look at it from above, the direction it points is the direction normal to the hill slope. Six of the probe depths were between 34 and 38 cm, while two of them were 48 cm. The two that were 48 cm occurred on south-southwest to south-southeast facing slopes, the others were oriented northerly of west or east. This results agrees well with theory: the depth to which the active zone reaches (i.e. permafrost depth) is dependent on the amount of solar input and the temperature. Since the temperature can be considered largely constant across the 25 sq-km zone of study, the slope normal direction determines the amount of solar energy input. The remarkably clean results from this experiment probably are themselves due to selective sampling: I could only push the probe through fine-grained, saturated soils. These fine-grained, saturated soils hold a lot of water, and the water causes the depths to permafrost to be more predictable than would a mixture of rock sizes, water, and air.
Summary:
The results of this successful trial of two new Hab-fabricated tools will be used in Part 4 to present a more comprehensive look at the mechanics of quick mud formation and distribution. There, the hydrology and temperature aspects will be discussed that have been largely ignored to this point. Another way of thinking about it is Part 2 discussed the spatial variation of quick mud locations, and Part 4 will discuss the temporal nature of the phenomenon. Thus, with an understanding of the relative risks of quick mud occuring on a given type of terrain, and that of driving over such terrain on a given day based on previous weather conditions, Part 5 will discuss how to avoid quick mud, and to know when it is likely to be a problem.
Also, integrated with Part 5 will be a discussion of how to use in-stream discharge measurements as a proxy for moisture conditions across the island (see EVA 10.10 report, as well as an upcoming report on ‘Lowell Canal’ hydrology), as well as a recommendation for soil sample collection procedures that can be implemented by the FMARS-10 crew as well as future crews here on Devon Island. This type of cumulative science return is very much applicable to our initial explorations of Mars. After all, each scientist will be on the surface at most for two years, yet understanding environments here on Earth has required many hundreds of continuous data collection years in some cases.
Personal Journal: “Weekend Update”
Because of the fine, fine weather right now (today got to like 54 F), we’ve taken advantage of the past two days (Friday and Saturday) to get as much EVA done as possible. Friday, we took a three-or-so hour ride on the ATVs north of the Hab. We took the ATVs about as fast as they could go, over about as rough terrain as they could handle, through as deep of streams as we could ford, and had a fantastic time doing it. The shotgun I was wearing dug into my back, and refused to find a groove to settle into, so it wasn’t all punch and champagne. Since I was playing the “safety officer” role on Friday’s EVA, I was able to go without a helmet and really have a good time looking around at the terrain. What amazing, stupefyingly amazing country this place is. And how totally devoid of green; my kingdom for a forest! Each small line of moss following some ephemeral stream becomes an object of great interest (sorry, no lime-green Irish mosses here, Mom, but there are some amazing red ones), to be peered at in great detail. On Saturday’s EVA, I saw a little white and black bird about the size of a large finch, and practically sprung a leak because of how it looked like real life back home. We also happened to stop for the second time at a monument that the HMP camp erected to the Columbia astronauts in 2003, called an inukchuk. This time, knowing that there was a memorial buried nearby, I found it. This inukchuk was dedicated to John P. Anderson, a mission payload specialist. That’s one of the problems with being an astronaut–a high chance of dying.
Saturday’s EVA, planned in the optimistic evening of Friday’s joyride, was to be a daunting beast of an outing. I manufactured for myself on Thursday and Friday evening two new tools: a permafrost depth probe (i.e. broomstick w/ sharpie marks at 10 cm intervals), and a quick mud coring device (two pieces of pvc, some corner brackets, a threaded rod, and four adjustable hose clamps). I was to test those on Saturday, along with sampling some interesting minerals near the south end of a neat little lake, and generally kill some time in order to relay messages for another EVA team much further south from the hab. We set out at 10:00 AM, and returned at 5:22 PM. To get to our site, we slogged for literally 1 hour through my favorite terrain: quick mud. That shit gets stuck to your boots a little each step so that without cleaning you eventually have a foot stuck into a mound of heavy, clayey mud. So, totally exhausted, I started my science objectives while my shotgun “safety officer” took his radio-relay position atop a hill nearby. Heroically, he did not move from that hill for 6 continuous hours. After about 45 minutes of tooling around with my new tools, I noticed that I ‘d dropped my rock hammer. 40 minutes of walking later, I returned to the spot I left, even more exhausted. This whole Saturday EVA, I was in-sim, meaning I was wearing a spacesuit. My only sustenance was my water tube, and I was sucking on that thing religiously. Plus, the sun finally came out and turned my helmet into a solar oven. Okay, yeah, I did about two more hours of science, took a boatload of great pictures, picked up some cool samples, found a fox-eaten carcass of an arctic hare, even found a little fluffy bunny tail and brought it back, wandered around for a while, and then finally ventured near a lake where NASA had a camp set up. They had their swanky modified Humvee there, along with one of those futuristic dome-tents. As I walked up, I saw a guy step out of the tent, pull the drawstrings on his hooded sweatshirt, run to a spot just down the hill, rub his hands together, and then lean over. At that point, I realized that he was using the lake toilet, so I discreetly turned away. When he left, I looked at the lake. It was a pathetic little thing, but it is at the base of a gigantic snowpack that looks semi-permanent. Any of the chunks of ponderously large ice that had broken off into the lake could have satisfied a family’s water usage for a month, but because of their sheltered position melted very slowly to yield a one-foot deep, gravel bottomed lake. After checking that out, I decided I was done doing science because my camera ran out of pictures, and I was tired. So, I went to a spot within sight of my shotgun guy, but as close to the Hab as I could get. That spot happened to be right in the middle of a quickmud area devoid of rocks, so I stood. In my pack and spacesuit. For an hour. I moved one time, but really I found that by leaning forward against the faceplate, I could relax a bit. I leaned on my tools and chilled out. After that hour, I got tired of it, went to a place with a rock, propped myself up on it and fell asleep for about 25 minutes. Apparently there were no hungry polar bears there.
We called over to Resolute and found that the NYTimes reporter is there, and should be joining us tomorrow. That will signal a change in the normal course of things a bit around here, hopefully for the interesting. And, I’ve got so many reports and science objectives to write-up that I feel like I’m at home writing papers again! But quite seriously, this place is unbelievable, and I’m having a fantastic time. I hope everyone’s hot-hot summers are treating them well. If you get too hot while sipping your ice cold beverages, just think about my 54 F heat wave, and the fact that I salivate instantly when I think about cracking into a coke. I’d even drink it warm. Damn that sounds awesome. I’ve had so much tang the last few days that I’ll have to warm it up just to change the flavor: hot tang. Tonight, one of the crew members broke out some tequila, and I mixed mine with tang: a tequila tangrise, or a tequila-tang sunrise. Either way, we have literally 20 pounds more of it, along with our 150 pounds of pasta. Hell, we could supply the entire 35-person crew of our HMP neighbors for a week with all of our pasta. Maybe pasta mixed with tang would be good…
July 25th
Today Andy and I waded up our water supply stream, the “Lowell Canal.” Later in the day after John Tierney had returned with the other EVA group, we played frisbee golf and had our flag changing ceremony.
EVA Narrative: EVA 12
Today’s hydrology EVA focused on a detailed hydrologic study of our water supply stream: ‘Lowell Canal.’ Starting near its confluence with another stream just north of the hab, we traveled upstream for approximately 3 km. Along the way, we noted large snowpacks and any tributaries. Then, on the way back along the same route, we stopped and took measurements of stream geometry (width and depth) as well as water velocity in order to calculate total volumes of water flowing through the stream at various points along it. Stream velocity measurements are typically done using a variety of instruments including, most commonly, doppler velocimiters and hydro-anemometers. Here on Devon Mars, we used a biologically-based neutrally-bouyant velocity probe: a grapefruit rind. Yes, at breakfast I collected everyone’s rinds for later use in my hydrologic investigation of our little Lowell Canal. Anyone who may have done this before (I expect very few who might be reading this) know that there are all sorts of challenges that must be overcome to collect accurate stream flow measurements using this technique. Yet in the hands of an experienced practitioner (which my one day of experience does not qualify me for), errors between this crude method and the more accurate probes mentioned above can be as low as 15%. I collected five of these measurements, performing each of the 15+ tasks required for every measurement by myself–I was the only in-sim member. It was challenging, wet, and frustrating work, but I was able to do it.
Those who may have read previous hydrology/hydrogeology science and EVA reports may have noticed themes of my work: Hab-fabricated instruments and in-field problem workarounds. Every time a scientist ventures away from the lab to do field work, there is some amount of improvisation and jerry-rig science that must be done. No amount of preparation can plan for each contingency that the field puts on equipment and experimental design. This will be all the more true when the field is at least 90 million miles away from the scientists’ labs.
July 26th
Today I spent the day in the Hab while the others were out on EVA. I got some reports done and then later in the day I went with Tierney over to visit NASA’s camp. It was a lot of fun.
Science Report: Stream Hydrology Report
Yesterday’s EVA 10.12 resulted in five stream discharge (velocity * area) measurements. Originally, I had hoped to collect approximately 10 measurements and perform a more detailed source/quantity survey including estimating snowpack volumes along stream banks. Two factors reduced this science objective: first, it became quite apparent at the very first stream discharge location that the ~15-25% error inherent in using floating grapefruit rind for my velocity probe could overwhelm differential flow estimates while going downstream, and second, because of a simultaneous EVA (10.11), I was limited to only one in-sim scientist, myself. However, I did make detailed observations on qualitative volumes and locations of snowpack size, tributary locations, and I was able to obtain 5 relatively solid discharge estimates.
Figure 1 below illustrates the five sample locations along Lowell Canal, and the watershed area for each sampling point. Note that the watershed of point 1 was not included on the map as it continued a large distance to the SSW. The stream itself is traced in blue on the map, and each sample point is shown as a colored and numbered square, with the color corresponding to the sub-watershed upstream of it. Note that the Houghton Crater rim is marked and labeled, as are the Landing Strip, FMARS, and “watering hole” locations.
Figure 1: An illustrated map of Lowell Canal, locations of stream discharge measurements along it, as well as the watershed areas contributing stream flow to each discharge measurement location.
Hydrologic Source Observations:
There were two general patterns observed while walking the ~3 km of Lowell Canal from the FMARS station “watering hole” where we obtain our water upstream: 1) snowpack volumes were higher where the slopes were steeper, and 2) snowpack volumes were higher on N->NW slope normal directions. All snowpacks were observed to be melting, however, larger snowpacks on gentle slopes exhibited direct-to-stream runoff, while those on steeper slopes did not. Presumably, this is because the steeper slopes create the requisite hydraulic gradient needed to drain steep slope soils. An alternative explanation would be that steep slopes are incapable of retaining fine-grained soils because of the higher erosive power of runoff along them, thus they drain more quickly with their relatively coarse-grained soils. Image 1 shows the snowpacks along the stream as the in-sim scientist progresses upstream. The entire length of Lowell Canal traversed in this study traces the rim of the Houghton Impact Crater. Thus, the upstream-left bank (i.e. the left-hand side while facing upstream) was most often fairly steep, whereas the upstream-right bank slope varied between gently and steeply sloping.
Image 1: Anthony Kendall walking upstream while in-sim. Notice the large snowpacks on the upstream-left and -right sides, and the relatively steep bank on the left side.
There were three “significant” tributaries along the ~3 km traverse. Significant, in this case, means that the tributary was not dry at the surface. None of these tributaries was very large. Indeed, large snowbanks seemed to provide a larger influx than any single one of these tributaries.
Stream Discharge Measurements:
Volumes of stream flow were measured by measuring the area of a cross section of Lowell Canal as well as the velocity of water through this cross-section. The areas were measured at at least three points along the cross section (1/3, 1/2 and 2/3 distance from bank to bank). Velocities were measured at each of these points. The velocity of the water in the stream was calculated by taking a grapefruit peel and dropping it into the stream. The time the peel takes to float between two marked locations then yields the stream velocity. A correction factor that is often used for this method (0.8) was not used due to the shallowness of the streams.
The table below summarizes the measurements taken during EVA 10.12. The units of stream flow (a synonym for stream discharge) are cubic meters per second (cms). Each discharge measurement is then subtracted from the previous upstream one, producing a differential discharge. This shows how much additional stream discharge has been generated by the sub-watershed of each measurement (the colored areas on the map). Note, that the final measurement (#5) indicates that the discharge declined between #4 and #5. This may actually have occurred due to a pump supplying water to the HMP camp located between these two points. However, there is a great deal of uncertainty in these estimates that can overwhelm the small differences between successive discharge measurements. Included is an estimate of these uncertainties. This was obtained by taking a characteristic uncertainty of the grapefruit-peel method of 25% and multiplying it by each of the discharge values obtained. Then, an indication of statistical significance was calculated by assuming that the 25% uncertainty corresponds to a single standard of deviation, and that the distribution of errors is roughly normal. Notice that only one differential discharge measurement shows anything above a 50% level of statistical significance.
Table: Summary of stream discharge measurements taken on EVA 10.12
Stream Transient Behavior Expectations:
The sources of water to this stream system are either direct snowmelt, or snowmelt that first passes through the soils surrounding the streams, not stream surface water inputs. This has implications for expected timing of diurnal stream flow changes, as well as seasonal trends. Arctic streams experience diurnal (daily) fluctuations in flow because of the snowpacks along their banks melting directly into the streams. If these waters must first pass through the soil, this diurnal fluctuation will be damped. The degree of damping corresponds to the texture of the soil, the slope of the banks, and the distance that must be traveled by snowmelt between the snowpack and the stream. Figure 2, below, illustrates this relationship, as well as a sketch of the generalized behavior of arctic seasonal streams.
Figure 2: A) Sketch of an idealized seasonal arctic stream. The timing of the peak depends on the exact temperature and solar input history of each season, as do the unique fluctuations along the ascending and descending limbs. B) A 3-D colormap illustarting the relationship between bank slope, particle size and snowbank distance from stream. C) Sketch of how the degree of damping affects the magnitude of the diurnal cycle. It is entirely possible that the timing of the mean crossing may change as well because of non-linear behavior of hydraulic response. The colors of these curves are meant to correspond to the colormap in B.
Stream Flow / Soil Moisture Relationship:
The reason that this transient behavior is important to our MARS research is that if one wanted to correlate stream behavior to soil wetness, the reading of the stream gauge must be understood in terms of how it corresponds to soil moisture conditions. In a stream devoid of large tributary inputs, the soil moisture conditions are tightly correlated to in-stream flow, thus the Lowell Canal stream gauge reading would be expected to be a good proxy for soil moisture. Therefore, if a crew were to carefully monitor a staff gauge as the season progresses, the reading on the gauge, and the stream flow that this reading corresponds to, should provide a fairly robust estimate of soil moisture conditions in quick mud prone areas. However, if the diurnal cycle is either not well understood, or not very well damped, then the stream gauge measurements not be very useful. If the stream gauge is read near the point of this cycle, it could suggest artificially high soil wetness. Instead, the mean of this cycle must be understood, thus the gauge must be monitored several times a day in order to understand the magnitude and timing of the diurnal cycle.
Calibrating the Staff Gauge:
Shown in Image 2 (see the photos on Flickr) is the staff gauge installed in Lowell Canal near the FMARS watering hole. In order to calibrate this gauge to produce stream discharge values rather than simply stream surface heights, several stream discharge measurements should be taken at the gauge location. These measurements are then correlated to stream gauge heights, and a curve is fit that is then used to interpolate and extrapolate discharges given a gauge height reading. The reason for doing this calibration is that reading a gauge height requires only 1 step, and a few seconds, whereas a full discharge measurement requires >15 steps and at least 10 minutes. During EVA 10.12, one discharge measurement was taken at the staff gauge location; two more will be taken this season in order to develop a preliminary staff gauge calibration. However, this gauge is not intended to be permanent because it is expected that Lowell Canal will freeze solid during the winter. Therefore, any new calibration must be done each year. It is not important to calibrate the gauge if soil moisture conditions are the only intended product of stream height measurements, however. So future FMARS crews could simply hammer it into the stream at the start of each rotation and leave it until needed.
Summary:
A challenging single-person hydrologic characterization of Lowell Canal was undertaken on EVA 10.12. Though not specifically a Mars analog type of research, understanding the behavior of the crew’s water supply is important regardless of the type of supply. It has been demonstrated that a detailed hydrologic characterization of a stream system is possible while in-simulation. Additionally, stream height should correlate strongly with soil moisture in quick mud prone areas. Also, because of the high degree of uncertainty in each individual stream discharge measurement, a quantitative interpretation of these results is difficult. It is important to note, however, that discharge increases, indicating that the ground beneath the stream is saturated down to permafrost.
July 27th
I had another day in the hab today. I manned the communications with the EVA teams.
Science Report: Quickmud: Part 4, Formation and Hydrology
In order for an object to sink into the quick mud surface, one or both of two things must occur: the soil must compress or be forced to the side. Thus, the soil must possess properties of a compressible material or those of a fluid, or both. I have been referring to quick mud very generally and loosely, so let me define more carefully exactly what I mean by the term. Quick mud is a type of mud that exhibits thixotropic properties (initially somewhat solid, but when pressed or vibrated becomes fluid), are relatively deep (thus presenting a navigational hazard), and are nearly totally saturated beneath the surface. Thus, some fluvial or lacustrine lowland muds would not necessarily fit this definition if they possess a highly unstable fine-material bottom (such as muck in a pond). The exact mechanism by which these saturated soils become unstable may be non-uniform across all landform types, but the primary cause of their behavior is perhaps quite simple.
Though not directly observed here, it is reasonable to assume that arctic soils freeze from the top down during the winter. This, along with a solid, gas-impermeable layer at the active layer/permafrost boundary, results in situation in which the soils are forced to expand upon freezing. During the winter months, the soils are neither clast nor matrix supported in many cases, but ice-supported instead. Then, when the soil begins to melt, again from the top down, they slowly subside. However, without any overburden pressure, this subsidence is likely not necessarily equal to the rise encountered the previous winter. Thus, what may have been a stable, matrix or clast (soil particle or rock) supported surface now has millions of small (micro-millimeter sized) cavities where ice crystals had forced apart the soil structure. Unless pressure or vibrations move the soil and rock particles enough, those cavities will go unfilled. The result is a sponge-like texture that can be easily observed in the field by picking up large rocks.
When the runoff from snow melt and ground frost runs off onto these spongy soils, those tiny cavities become filled with water, somewhat stabilizing the ground surface from uniformly collapsing. However, while the fluid can support the weight of the soil itself effectively, a point source of pressure such as a boot or ATV tire will not be supported. This fluid-supported quick mud will then collapse beneath the object and flow around it, behaving then as a dense colloidal fluid (fluid with suspended fine particles), no longer as a solid soil surface.
Thus two things are required for quick mud to form: 1) it must have the spongy texture, and 2) the cavities must be sufficiently large and filled with a sufficient quantity of water. The first of these two factors is evident in the field based on identification of landform type (Part 2 of this report), and the second factor is determined by relative wetness of the soil and the size of the microcavities within the soil relative to the size of the rocks present.
The spongy texture forms because the soil is capped on the top and bottom by ice, and freezes solid finally beneath the surface. Thus, the soil surface must thrust upward. However, the soil must also be capped on the edges by ice as well, otherwise the expansion of the soil would be horizontal as well as vertical. This edge capping is landform governed. Referring back to some of the common arctic landforms seen in part 2 of this report, I will discuss how each landform type is horizontally capped. Sand and mud plains are capped only in certain circumstances. For instance, if the outer edge of a sand plain freezes, it is not constrained from expanding horizontally. However, by the time the center of that sand plain freezes, it will have been previously capped on all sides by the inward-advancing freeze line. Sand and mud boils are very often horizontally capped by the quickly-freezing rock polygons surrounding them. Sand and mud stripes between rock stripes are similarly capped, as are the fore-lobe portions of gelifluction lobes. Rock moguls are unlikely to be horizontally capped because their 3-D structure enables a large degree of expansion. Felsenmeer may be subject to spongy-textured soils, but crucially may have large enough clasts in order to either prevent sinking into quick mud soils or prevent the soil from becoming quick mud at all.
The figure below illustrates the formation of the spongy texture in otherwise stable soils (not a progression that would truly occur in nature, but is useful for understanding the process). A) shows a cross-section of the fore-lobe of a gelifluction lobe, the center line of a frost boil, or perpendicular to rock stripes. Upon partial freezing, B), the rocky portions of the landform freeze first due to proportionally lower water content, and a frozen surface approaches the core or center of the landform. C) illustrates how that unfrozen core then is forced to expand, thrusting up the surface of the landform, resulting in the millimeter-sized cavities seen in a greatly zoomed diagram of the soil matrix in D).
Figure: The sequence A-C represents a time-evolution of the landform as it freezes. Though it is labeled as a frost boil, this figure could also correspond to either rock striped terrain or gelifluction lobes. D illustrates the effect of subsequent thawing on the texture of the soil and the resultant millimeter sized cavities.
Landscapes lacking large rocks or significant quantities of smaller rocks are subject to the second condition of quick mud formation, cavity sizes overwhelming clast sizes within the soil matrix. Landforms, again, are a good indicator of this factor, as was discussed in part 2 of this report. Frost heave tends to force large rocks to the surface, and the rock fraction of a given soil will dictate what type of landform results. The spongy texture alone is insufficient to produce quick mud, however. Those cavities must be occupied by enough water so that the volume of water is locally larger than the settled pore volume of the soil. In other words, when there is more water in a given volume of soil than it could be held if that soil lacked microcavities, quick mud could result. However, because the compression on the soil tends to be very fast compared to normal settling times (i.e. the time it takes for a foot to step and then release), the soil may become quick mud simply due to the lubricating properties of large quantities of fluid within the soil. So, defining a minimum volume of water necessary to cause quick mud quantitatively seems impossible on first principles alone. Of course, more moisture means that quick mud conditions are more likely, and vice versa; and soil moisture levels can be understood qualitatively fairly well.
The relative wetness of the soil is controlled by slope angle, position along a slope, amounts of snowmelt runoff, soil particle size, depth to permafrost and microtopography. Higher slope angles drain soils more quickly, soils higher along a slope dry more quickly than those lower on the slope, high quantities of snowmelt runoff in a season and in any given day will cause the soil to become wetter, finer-grained soils such as silts or clays drain much more slowly than sands or gravels, shallow permafrost reduces the cross-sectional area for water to flow out of a given body of soil, and microtopography will tend to dry certain areas more quickly than others (such as the top of a rock mogul versus the crevices in between). Of these many factors, the snowmelt quantity from day to day is the only time-variable one. This factor can be understood relatively by monitoring the levels of various streams around the location of interest, such as has been suggested in earlier reports. Thus, by a combination of landform and soil-texture mapping, along with hydraulic monitoring of nearby streams, the spatial and temporal distribution of soil moisture conditions can be understood quite well.
Part 2 of this report discussed the quick mud risk of a given landform type, and this report has discussed both the formation processes of quick mud, and how soil moisture conditions influence this process. Combining these two parts with the coring results discussed in Part 3, a qualitative approach to managing quick mud risk in the field will be presented in Part 5. Also to be discussed is the soil texture and landform mapping that would be required in order to accurately plot navigation routes prior to EVA start.
July 28th
Today Judd and I went out on an early morning scouting EVA. We noticed one of our fuel barrels had floated downstream somehow and we mounted another EVA to remove it.
Engineering Narrative
During our first EVA (10.17) of the day, we spotted what appeared to be a fuel drum near the feature named ‘Devo Rock’. It was stranded some small distance above the water line on the southern bank of the stream. We had seen it only from a great distance, but were fairly confident in the prognosis, so we decided that EVA 10.18 be launched partly as a recovery mission for the fuel drum. On EVA 10.18, I approached the barrel with some rope and two 2×4s. We decided initially to carry it out much as a patient would be carried on a stretcher, but after realizing that this position would be fundamentally unstable, we carried the drum beneath a single 2×4. Stacy and I lugged it out of the canyon, with the help of the other EVA members, and brought it up to the ATV trailer we’d brought. It should also be noted that this entire activity was done in-sim. We decided to do this as it would be an analog for a retrieval of some large piece of materiel that may have broken off of a pressurized rover, or blown away in a windstorm on Mars.
The fuel drum was definitely one of ours; I photographed it with our ‘Property of the Mars Society’ stickers on the side as I had found it. It was also empty, and looked relatively unweathered. This leads to the conclusion that it had inadvertently rolled downslope from the airstrip and into our water supply stream (‘Lowell Canal’) where it subsequently floated downstream when the water was higher. I am unsure whether this barrel was one of the ones that Judd and I brought to the airstrip to be removed to Resolute prior to the remainder of the crew’s arrival, or if it had been there over the winter from crew 9. Either way, we have retrieved it, and will implement sufficient measures to assure that this does not happen again. None of us wants FMARS to have an unnecessarily large environmental footprint.
Personal Journal: “Another Update From Mars”
Here’s the brief since my last post: 1) the NYTimes reporter, John Tierney (a Libertarian Op-Ed columnist) stayed with us for three days, 2) I used grapefruit peels instead of our trusty doppler velocimiter I have at MSU to measure stream discharge, and 3) I wrote until I’d worn my fingers down to nubs (right now, I’m typing with my knuckles, that’s all there is left). Oh yeah, and 4) we played frisbee golf with Tierney, 5) had our flag-changing ceremony, and 6) I visited the NASA Houghton Mars Project camp and did some schmoozing with people who might be able to offer me an internship.
1) John Tierney showed up Sunday afternoon. I’d drawn a sign for us to hold at the airstrip labeled ‘Tierney.’ This is really funny, because the plane he came in on would only have one passenger, and we were dressed in spacesuits, so it was really obvious that the sign would be unnecessary. I had volunteered to give up my stateroom so that he could have a more comfortable experience. This put me up in what I like to call the Penthouse Suite. It’s pretty great, open balcony, large floor area, dripping ceilings. Oh yeah…posh. He stayed until Wednesday afternoon, and we had a very nice time with him here. It was nice to have a seventh person around, it added some spice to our lives. Plus, we got into lots of great debates about things: Mars exploration, Mars terraforming, religion, politics, education…it was fun, and surprisingly civil considering that no one really agreed on anything. The six of us were all liberals of one stripe or another, and Tierney was Libertarian conservative, so helped to get a debate instead of a bunch of head nodding and grousing
2) My grapefruit peel science was ghetto-cool. Plus, I fashioned a net out of some overly-flexible wire and a throw away dishcloth. That worked twice and then totally failed in a flurry of swearing and wet gloves (I was in-sim, so I had to keep my gloves on, thus the net, and I didn’t want to let my peels float away). Anyway, the idea is that you float the peels in the river to see how fast it’s flowing, and then measure the geometry and you get stream flow fluxes. The estimated uncertainty of this method is 10-25%, I would say that mine was in the 20% range, so the results were marginal at best. But, I wrote a report about it, and it was big.
3)Writing, ah yes: 2 long parts of my 5 part report on quick-mud, the stream hydrology report I just mentioned, lots of miscellaneous engineering reports and a few narrative reports. Plus, emails and journaling. Coming up: 2 more big reports, a presentation for the Mars Society conference to be delivered by someone else, and maybe a publishable paper from my quick mud stuff.
4) Frisbee golf on Devon Island: Tierney brought two discs, and after our flag-changing ceremony which I’ve arbitrarily made #5 in my list, we played disc golf. We had a great time. We all had our suits on, but not helmets and backpacks, and we selected particularly noticeable rocks around the Hab and played 8 holes. The Signature Hole was from the rim of the impact crater down into the crater. The view was gorgeous, and the drop into the crater made it seem like I was a pretty damn good disc thrower. I’m not bad, but I’m nowhere near good either. I wonder if that’s the furthest north that disc golf has been played. It just might be. It was also the first time I’d played, so it was great fun because of that too.
5) The Hab has the “Martian Tricolor” flag flying about it all winter long. The flag flying all winter lost 1 of its colors, it’s supposed to be red-green-blue , the one we found was just red-green, so we needed to replace it. The bands are vertically striped and are meant to indicate a progression of Mars from the Red Planet, to one with plants that we’ve genetically engineered to withstand a thin atmosphere there, to finally one with liquid water on its surface that we humans could live on very easily. I am a “blue” when it comes to Martian Terraforming. I think that, as long as life is not readily discoverable near the surface, we have the right to try and make the planet as Earth-like as possible. Greens are those who think that we should bring our plants to large, covered, pressurized domes and live in those. Reds are the folks who believe that the geology and possibility of native life on Mars, however slim, means that we should leave it alone, and in some cases preserve it as Antarctica has been preserved. One of the crew shimmied up the antenna mast, climbed the dome on top of the hab and changed our flag for us, to much pomp and ceremony. Which we immediately followed by disc golf (see #4).
6) I visited the Houghton Mars Project camp with Tierney. He needed to go over and interview a few people who were there, including Pascal Lee, the head of the HMP camp, and the driving force behind the Hab I am now writing from. I went with Tierney to try and do some networking. I’m in the market for a cool NASA-esque internship next summer, something for 3 months, no strings attached. So, I talked to a bunch of people at HMP, got my face and name around, and generally had a fine time. Plus, they fed me popcorn and barbecue potato chips which we lack here at the Hab. Oh yeah, and they have a dedicated transponder on a comsat that gives them 1.5 mbps of continuous internet access. We have some Iridium sat-phones that get 9.6 kbps of the most intermittent service ever at $2.35 per connected minute. That explains the lack of pictures here, BTW. They actually watched the shuttle launch live, or at least the computer geeks did, we just heard about it later in one of our two email download sessions. Then, they put in Monsters Inc, and I watched that for a while on their projector before returning to our nice warm Hab (they only have tents).
Well, now Tierney’s gone, I have my room back, and life is returning to Devon Island normal. Our sunny skies have returned to intermittent blanket fog and clouds. The temperature is hovering at a scorching 50 F. I have a bunch more EVAs to go on over the next 4 or so days, and then we break our simulation in order to clean and prep the Hab for winter. So, I’ll probably get one more posting out before I leave Devon Island on Thursday of Friday. Oh, yeah, check Saturday’s and Tuesday’s NYTimes Op-Ed page for John Tierney ’s column. I have no idea what he is going to say, so it should be interesting!
July 29th
Another day in the Hab. These days are not exactly relaxing. I spend most of my time fixing stuff, maintaining generators, and writing reports.
Science Report: Quickmud: Part 5, Risk Assessment
The previous four parts of this report served to describe quick mud, how it forms, how it is related to landform type, and when and where quick mud risk is highest. This part seeks to bring all of those parts together into a comprehensive review of relevant risk factors. The primary objective, however, is this: to demystify quick mud itself, and to transform it from a phantom threat to an understood, manageable navigational hazard.
There are five primary components to this report: relevance of this series of reports to Martian exploration, topographic map route planning, in-field navigation, hydrologic controls on quick mud risk, and finally how to improve route planning using multi-field-season regolith mapping.
Relevance to Mars:
There is a direct Mars analog to the types of terrain studied in this report: the patterned terrain observed at mid-high latitudes on Mars. Though the terrain may be similar, the quick mud phenomenon will not be due to the instability of liquid water essential to quick mud formation at Mars surface temperatures and pressures. For this report, the value of geomorphology (the study of landforms) to the understanding of cryo-hydrologic processes in this case needs to be emphasized. For, the first step in this study was to make observations about quick mud in the field and correlate them to geomorphologic types (such as frost boils or rock stripes). Then, back at the lab, a text describing the basic features and formation mechanisms of these different landforms (Pielou’s “A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic”) provided key insights into the link between the landforms and quick mud. After that, field sampling confirmed these links and helped provide the final keys to understanding the physical processes that generate quick mud. This progression is exactly what would have occurred on Mars, were this a real manned mission rather than simply an analog.
Consider this thought experiment: the first manned crew lands on Mars. The site was previously photographed at sub-meter resolution, a rover has landed at the site and confirmed the possibility of safe landing, and an Earth Return Vehicle has been returning pictures of the surface for the previous 2 years. Those photographs would give mission planners, and the Marsnauts themselves, a good idea of the geomorphology of the terrain. They would, however, not necessarily understand the formation mechanisms of these landforms, although hypotheses explaining the landforms would have been put forth by Terran scientists. So, some of the first Martian field experiments would be testing these hypotheses, eventually leading to an understanding of the physical processes at work around the Habitat. Then, the Marsnauts would extend their knowledge further afield. Working from topographic maps and digital elevation models generated from orbital data and imagery, they would plan longer EVA routes, avoiding hazards that by now were better understood because of their earlier near-Hab work, which would then lead to broader sampling of landform types, further improving physical process understanding. To summarize:
geomorphological observations –> formation process hypotheses –> field verification and testing –> comprehensive hazard risk assessment –> (Given orbital probe data) safer, more effective EVA route planning and improved in-field navigation –> (because of the increased range) more thorough testing of formation process hypotheses
Topographic Map Route Planning:
With virtually no data from the ground on soil types, rock fractions or moisture conditions, most of the navigational risk on an EVA can be avoided simply by choosing the least risky route topographically. There are many types of navigational risks; steep slopes, large rocks and quick mud are three of the most common. This report only addresses the mud risk.
The figure below, part A, illustrates how EVA route planning should be done in order to take account of quick mud risk. There are two main factors to take into account when planning using the topographic map: 1) contour lines concave to the direction of travel indicate wetter areas than convex lines, and 2) the direction the slope faces will determine the depth to which the permafrost is melted, and how much snow remains at a given time in the field season.
Figure: A) A traced portion of a contour map north of the Hab with colored quick mud risk overlain, B) An elevation view of a hillslope indicating the dominant landform and relative quick mud risk along it.
Concavity/Convexity of topographic map contour lines provide a great deal of information for EVA route planning. Because water will run away from convex hillslopes towards the concave ones, drainage features form within concave areas of the hillslope. These drainage basins, especially downslope, tend to accumulate finer soil particles (except for the rivers themselves in some cases), thus increasing the risk of quick mud. Of course, the additional volumes of water in these areas increase the risk dramatically as well. Flat contour lines are not necessarily any safer than convex lines, because flat-countoured slopes can indicate broad plains of uniform grained soil, which could increase quick mud risk as well. The safest navigational path considering this factor is straight along a hill ridge, over the crest (or near it), and down another ridge.
Slope direction controls the magnitude and temporal dynamics of quick mud formation. Southward facing slopes receive more solar input, melting the permafrost to greater depths. During wet times, these deeper frost layers create a much larger hazard for driving than a near-surface permafrost layer would. As the season progresses, however, the southward facing slopes may dry out more quickly due to increased drainage capacity and solar heating. Additionally, the northward facing slopes will hold their snowpacks longer than a south-facing one. This means that the risk of quick mud remains higher longer into the season on these north-facing slopes, even though the exact magnitude of that risk would not likely reach that of the early-season south-facing ones.
In-Field Navigation:
Once the route has been chosen by topographic map risk analysis, the next most effective way of mitigating quick mud risk is by in-field navigation. There are three main tasks of the field-navigator relevant to quick mud: 1) follow the rocks, 2) drive straight upslope, and 3) know what is coming next. Following the rocks is the best advice that can be given for avoiding quick mud. Rock striped terrains are stable if the rocks are large enough, rock polygons around frost boils are more stable than the boils themselves, and rock moguls and felsenmeer are, if not stable, at least are safe to remain on for some time. The largest danger here is that the rock fraction of a terrain will be too low, and then even the rocks themselves are unstable. These are dangerous areas, but can be difficult to avoid. In order to avoid sinking in meta-stable mud surfaces, the navigator is often traveling very quickly downslope. At speed, the previously safe rock-stripe terrain can quickly becoming low rock-fraction boils or even sand and mud plains within seconds. Becoming aware of how landforms progress down and up hillslopes is the key avoiding inadvertent driving over very low-rock terrain. Part B of the figure above illustrates this progression, and the relative quick mud risk along the hillslope.
Driving straight up or down slope is very important for two primary reasons: the hill is often more navigable near the top, and following the rocks is more likely if you travel in the upslope direction. There is one large exception to the top-of-slope navigability and that is the case where the hilltop is a large-rock felsenmeer (‘sea of rocks’). Such terrain are extremely difficult to traverse at times, but are safe from a quick mud perspective. In these cases, the seemingly contradictory advice of finding the sand in these felsenmeer is a perfectly acceptable practice.
Know what is coming next. This piece of navigation advice is both obvious and difficult in practice. Geomorphology comes to the aid of the navigator here. Since there are two primary landscaping processes, cryo- and fluvial-hydrology, the landscapes are relatively simple. There is no vegetation to obscure view, so thus if a navigator knows what to expect, confirming or refuting that expectation is just a matter of slowing down a bit and looking around.
Hydrologic Controls on Risk:
So far, all of the discussion has centered around relative risk, with no real way of pinning down a quantitative estimate to these factors. Monitoring hydrologic conditions at streams near the navigational area can be a key to comparing these relative risks throughout the field season. The general trend of soil moisture conditions is from thoroughly saturated to somewhat dry as the season progresses. However, deviations in snowbank survival, temperature, solar heating and relative humidity can drastically alter the exact shape of the soil-moisture decline. Additionally, though Devon is a desert, it can receive significant quantities of rain, the degree to which the rain soaks into the landscape and prolongs quick mud conditions can be very well understood by monitoring how long the stream takes to return to expected gauge heights.
Hydrology is also involved in risk assessment in a number of other ways, some which have been discussed already such as slope aspect (the slope-normal direction). Another is the presence of snowpack shelves. These features create localized hazards that are difficult to see on maps, and especially after mostly melted, can be difficult to detect in the field. They are best observed by considering that hillslopes are naturally gradually curved, and that sudden deviations from that are likely to be snow shelves. Even in late season when most of the snowpack has melted, these snow shelves can remaine, some of which are semi-permanent. Thus, quick mud can crop up to an unsuspecting navigator late in the season when quick mud alertness may have ebbed.
Improving Route Planning with Multi-Season Regolith Mapping:
Even with all of the pre-planning and in-field navigation tools these reports have provided, there is still the large uncertainty of soil particle size and rock fraction of the active zone. There are two strategies to mapping quick-mud that can be taken: 1) quick mud locations can be noted and compiled year to year, or 2) soil particle size and rock fraction can be estimated and compiled year to year. Though easier in practice, method one is more fallible in that it requires detecting a transient phenomenon. The second method is hampered by the fact that the spacesuit gloves may soil particle size estimation in the field a challenge. In fact, this challenge needs to be overcome for eventual Mars exploration, as feeling the texture of soil and rocks is a very basic tool in the geologist’s toolbox. If both approaches are followed, the most amount of work would be required, but it would also serve to test the ideas and methods presented in this series of reports. This multi-season mapping would also be a key component of research by Mars explorers, because soil particle size and rock fraction will be very important to navigation there, and these two quantities are not easily detected by remote sensing (orbital or air imagery and data).
With this in mind, I suggest that future crews at FMARS begin compiling map data on soil size (via lab analyzed samples) and estimated rock fraction. This activity could also be implemented at MDRS, though its importance to navigation there is questionable. Operationally, procedures to share map data need to be implemented, for this reason and others. These two datasets would provide information beyond navigational data, because the rock fraction and soil particle sizes are products of many factors, including bedrock parent material.
Summary:
These five reports have detailed, dissected and analyzed the phenomenon of quick mud. Its composition and formation have been described, and methods for avoidance have been given. Their primary purpose, to aid the navigation of this and future FMARS crews, has also led to a number of Mars analog lessons. This realization is in many ways in direct disagreement with the ideas of the value of Mars simulation put forth by some Mars exploration researchers. Their supposition, that analog research is only of value if it is either very specific or very high fidelity, has been shown to be somewhat flawed. This research project was not an analog to a similar Martian terrain, and was conducted fully inside of an arguably low-fidelity simulation (though completely within that simulation), yet it revealed key understandings of how true Martian surface science would be conducted. Perhaps a key benefit of Mars analog research on a small budget and long in advance of any manned mission is that we are learning how to explore, and to do so scientifically. NASA does not know how to explore a planet, indeed no one alive has done any serious continental scale exploration. Here at FMARS, that’s what we are doing. Devon Island was in many ways completely unknown to us (as much as any environment on Earth can be). We came with very few tools, but have conducted serious science and learned serious Mars analog lessons.
July 30th
Today Tiziana and I headed about 5 miles north of the hab to a high point that we had hoped might allow us a view of the ocean. It didn’t, but we were treated to some spectacular views anyway. I also tried a helmet-mounted voice recorder for the EVA.
Engineering Narrative
Title: A In-Helmet Combination Voice Recorder/Communications System
A relatively cheap and easy helmet modification could provide a very large return on investment, specifically by providing three distinct benefits: 1) an increase in simulation fidelity, 2) an increase in science EVA time, and 3) an increase in credibility of in-sim research.
The science conducted during Mars analog simulations is limited by a number of factors: mobility, range, endurance, and credibility. Why credibility? Because, in a lab or field setting, everything a scientist does should be recorded. This complete record of work adds one more potential layer to the verification process of peer review. During my quick mud investigations, it became apparent to me that in order to publish the results of my work, I would need much better documentation than I was capable of making in the field in any reasonable timeframe. Writing in pen is impractical for geological observations. My partial solution to this problem was to borrow a digital voice recorder from a fellow crew member and, manipulating everything with the standard-issue suit gloves, turn it on, press record and shove it between my plastic collar and suit up near my mouth so that I could dictate. The problems with this were four-fold: 1) This was a violation of sim in some sense, 2) the difficulty manipulating the device limited my use of it, in some cases resulting in observations not being recorded as they should, 3) the voice recorder was exposed to the elements by my gloves and also by virtue that I had to keep it accessible, and 4) while using the device I was incapable of doing any other science, which reduces even further the range and endurance of the scientist in simulation.
I propose a system that, at somewhere near $100 per suit (per helmet actually), would increase the scientific credibility of Mars Society analog simulations, would increase the scientific return of each and every EVA, and would add a whole new dimension of reality to the simulation. This system is simply two elements: 1) a modification of the FMARS helmets and comms system to match that at MDRS, and 2) a digital voice recorder capable of voice-activated recording. The digital voice recorder need not be modified in any way, it just needs to have a holster in the inside of the helmet. The communications system changes are needed to increase the reliability of the microphone/headset systems by eliminating wires inside of the suit itself.
One EVA 10.21, a prototype helmet-mounted voice recorder system was tested. Pictures are available upon request. The salient features are that it was a duct-tape sheath mounted adjacent to the left ear inside the helmet. The voice recorder used was an Olympus VN-240PC set to low microphone gain and high quality recording. I also covered the microphone on the top of the unit with a sound-absorbing paper material. This was then set to voice-activated record and turned on prior to donning the helmet. It performed very well, except that the ATV was loud enough to trigger the microphone. On the pedestrian portion of the EVA it worked splendidly, however. This limitation could be overcome by the use of a throat microphone, or some similar technology.
In addition to the science gains of an in-helmet voice recorder and communications system, this comparatively cheap modification will build towards the stated goal of increasing the fidelity of the simulation. Such in-helmet communications and note-taking systems are in development in several labs and space agencies, and the fact that it is lacking in our suits makes them more of an analog to Apollo-era suits rather than Martian-era. Additionally, if peer-reviewed scientific papers regularly resulted from in-sim research at FMARS and MDRS, this would enhance the credibility of the Mars Society as a scientific organization. This would certainly aid in fundraising efforts, and perhaps help to attract more top-notch scientific talent to these two research stations.
July 31st
I had planned a “recreation” of the Mars Exploration Rovers’ paths for a few weeks. We would travel at least 4 km (the odometry at the time of our EVA), and do much of the same science as the rovers did. We would travel those 4km in about 4 hours, as opposed to 4 rover-years.
EVA Narrative: EVA 23
Today’s EVA saw the largest single contingent of our crew in the field yet this field season–as many, in fact, as we are capable of fielding and still keeping one person in the Hab as our HabComm. The five of us set out on a course that would take us down into an impact crater, along its rim, across two large hills, around two crystal clear permafrost-bottom lakes, through a canyon, up a steep hill, and many other places besides. Today, we took a grand tour of this beautiful country, making observations and collecting measurements along the way.
We embarked with a toolset that resembles many of the instruments on to the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), Spirit and Opportunity. We would traverse 7 km of very rough terrain, similar to the total odometry of both missions but over land inaccessible to wheeled rovers. Along the way, four trained scientists applied their skills to similar types of terrain (excluding the lakes, of course) that the MERs have encountered, but right here on Devon Mars. The one major difference between our EVA and the two MER missions is that on our Earthly Mars analog, we have human scientists on the ground. If Devon were truly Mars, we’d be in a position that Squyres et. al. would surely give most anything to be in as well.
On this EVA we experienced a few very un-Marslike happenings; Tiziana sunk to her shins in mud early on, Stacy waded down the center of a shallow stream, seagulls defending their fledglings dived at us when we strayed to close, and a radio call informing us of an incoming plane forced an early abort. Caveats aside, this EVA demonstrated relatively successfully how human scientists can cover ground in four hours that required four Earth-years of rover travel time. In those hours, we collected tens of samples, recorded half an hour of voice data, took hundreds of photographs, obtained 9 X-ray flourescence spectra, dug three trenches in the regolith, and even gathered fossils (we’re optimistic about the role of a paleontologist on Mars). That’s not to mention the 16 human-hours of observations, pattern-matching, conscious and subconscious analysis, discussion, and otherwise random associations that make the activity of science so unpredictable and creative.
The single most potent argument against human exploration of Mars in the public forum is the cost of such missions. Yet governments have demonstrated their willingness to spend tens of billions over two decades on projects such as the ITER project, or even the ISS. A mission to Mars would cost roughly as much (even less, perhaps), and the amount of science returned would be of inestimable worth. If one were, however, to put a price on each piece of digital data returned by the rovers, a manned mission to Mars valued similarly would be worth trillions of dollars. Nothing can take away from the fantastic science that the MERs are enabling for some of our most brilliant researchers, but our simple Mars-analog simulation suggests that humans can explore the Martian surface better, faster, and cheaper than any robotic rover that modern engineering could construct.
A science report detailing the work done on this EVA, as well as the analysis done back at the Hab, will come out in the next few days.
August 1st
Tiffany led a simulated rescue of a crew member injured while in simulation.
August 2nd
Today we officially ended our simulation and went for a very fun joyride in the nice weather.
Crew Narrative
Today we officially ended our simulation as we need to do a number of out-of-sim chores and Hab winterization procedures before our extraction plane comes (probably) Thursday. We were in-simulation for 17 full days, and completed 24 EVAs during that time. We had one day with no EVAs, but every other day had at least one, and as many as three on one occasion. These were, in all but two cases, science EVAs with true science objectives. The pace of our scientific exploration was at times beyond what we were able to assimilate into our daily science reports. Yet, the entire crew felt the necessity to push the EVAs as hard as we could beca