July 13, 2008 - from Resolute to Devon Island

Photos of the Day: July 13, 2008 - HMP RS

[Note: Click "Read More" below for my personal journal that I am keeping as Mars Projects Manager for the Space Frontier Foundation. See MarsOnEarth.org for the daily status reports for the Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) that I post as EPO for the Mars Institute.]

I woke up at 6am (thinking it was 7), and was able to take a nice hot shower across the hall since the woman in that room left at 5:30am. Breakfast was great - scrambled eggs, fruit, toast and Debbie's mother's homemade jam. It was super! We drove to the cargo bay, then the airport. Nadeem did actually get to stay in a nice room at the Polar Shelf after all, but not after I pretend-make-fun of him. "Sooo.. how was your tent?"

copyright 2008 Mars Institute

The twin otter flight to Devon Island was beautiful. "You'll have National Geographic out your window" was how the pilot put it. Of course we saw some great sea ice and the Mars-like landscape of Devon Island. Two locals from Resolute, Katsak Manik and James Hunter, traveled with us. They'll be helping around camp with various things. James has worked for the HMP in prior seasons but it is Katsak's first time.

copyright 2008 Mars Institute

We were greeted on the runway (the place where the dirt is smoothed out so that planes and helicopters can land safely) by Stephen Braham (Associate Director), John Schutt (HMP Base Camp Manager), Kimik the dog, Jesse Weaver (technician), and a few others.

copyright 2008 Mars Institute

They loaded our gear on ATVs and drove it to "Tent City" where we set up our tents after a short tour of the camp facilities. I joked with Nadeem about his tent accommodations again. Jesse had helped me set up my rather fancy sleeping tent, while Nadeem still just had his footprint on the ground held down by some stones. "Mine is quite roomy, and I have a front porch with a great view of the camp. Now tell me, will your feet be sticking out of yours?"

I set up my laptop in the office tent (known as the "geek tent" in prior years). Thanks to Pascal Lee, I have my own designated spot on the desk. Once Nadeem was done setting up his tent (he had refused our help, not that I would have been much help anyway), we were briefed on safety, radio communication protocol, and given ATV training. I do look forward to joining traverses. If I let my mind go, wearing a helmet, big gloves, and orange-tinted sunglasses, I feel like I'm traversing on Mars in a spacesuit. It's a very surreal and wonderful feeling.

But it is a big privilege to be on a traverse, so I will be lucky to go on a few. There must be a trained communications expert in the front, a trained polar bear watch person in back, an extra ATV handy, and a scientific expedition willing to allow me to follow and document some of what they are doing. In prior years, these elements only came together for me once or twice.

I spent a few hours getting familiar with my job here, as EPO (Education & Public Outreach) for the Mars Institute, learning what media to post where, and making sure I understand the subtle (yet strict!) guidelines about what is ok to post and what is not.

For the Mars Institute I will be using Flickr to post photos, Moveable Type to publish status and science reports, which will automatically be published to marsonearth.org (the Mars Institute's website), Twitter for micro-blogs that are too insignificant to post to the main site, and YouTube for videos. And of course photos and videos will also be embedded into reports.. then there is also the picture of the day, so on and so forth. I think I have all of this under control, and my newly-beefed-up MacBook is handling things quite well! So far so good.

Before I passed out I managed to upload some photos to the Mars Institute Flickr site, and a status report to marsonearth.org.

copyright 2008 Mars Institute

I was actually quite warm sleeping in my tent. Ironically, the only thing that was cold were my toes, even though I had a disposable warmer down there. I don't think I was ever warm in prior seasons. I'm not going to say I was very comfortable, but I was warm!

over and out.
-Elaine

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Elaine Walker

Mars Projects Manager
Space Frontier Foundation
marsfrontier.org