Katy Quinn’s Devon Island Journal: July 10, 2001

Note: Text and photos republished from Katy Quinn’s FMARS page by permission of the author.

Tuesday, July 10.  T-minus 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The time has come for Phase 2 to enter the hab!  In just a couple
of hours we should be heading over to the FMARS habitat and swapping with
Phase 1.  My bags are packed and I’m ready to go.  Living in
the hab should be a lot cushier than the tent accommodations but since
we’re cooking for ourselves the quality of the cuisine might suffer. 
You can’t have everything.  This morning I helped pack up food supplies
for the hab.  We will be eating a lot of pasta, rice, and instant
mashed potatoes.  Mostly non-perishable foods since we only have a
tiny refrigerator.  We won’t want to cook anything too complicated
because of time constraints.  Hard to say exactly what it will be
like in the hab, I’m trying to stay free of expectations.  That way
everything will be a wonderful surprise.  I’m excited and a little
bit anxious, I want everything to go well.

After getting together the food supplies I helped on a seismic survey
with Vladimir Pletser, Robert Zubrin also came along to help out. 
Vladimir is also on the Phase 2 crew and wanted to do a dry run survey
before we had to try do one in the space suits we will be required to wear
outside while we are at the hab.  We drove the equipment up to the
habitat from the HMP base camp using ATVs, then we drove out to the survey
site further along the ridge that the hab is situated on.  The survey
took about 2.5  hours to complete and we only did it for one geometry
of the survey line, the full survey might take 1/2 hour more.  So
when we perform the survey in space suits it will make for a long EVA. 
The survey worked really well, we got some good test data.  The surveying
system has been loaned to Vladimir by the French Geophysical Institute,
they are interested in how well an astronaut can operate the equipment. 
The survey is designed to detect sub-surface ground ice.  Looking
into the future, with a manned mission to Mars, this would be an essential
measurement to make.

While we were in the area around the FMARS habitat we had a chance to
look around.  The sun was shining brightly and the view across the
crater was the best yet, the pale gray breccias really popped out from
the surrounding brown carbonates.  Poking around the rocks about the
habitat we found some fossilized corals, remnants of an ancient coral reef. 
Soon I will only be able to go outside the habitat wearing a space suit,
as per the simulation protocols, so I took the opportunity to have a good
look at the hab.  An impressive structure, I can’t believe they erected
it last year with only the most basic of tools, after the crane and other
equipment were wrecked in a failed airdrop.  There’s a lot of sweat
and effort holding the hab together, I feel privileged to be a crew member
and hope to carry on the same spirit during my stay there.

This may be my last chance to directly access the Internet and post
a journal page but I’ll be sending reports to Marc Boucher at SpaceRef.com,
they should go up on their FMARS website (www.mars.tv).  In any case,
I’ll be stockpiling reports and posting them on mass as soon as I get back
to HMP base camp or possibly Boston.  To all my friends and family
to the South, I’m thinking of you and hope you are all well.  Wish
me luck as I bid you Bon Voyage on my way to Mars… or a close facsimile
thereof.

Copyright © 2001 Katy Quinn – All rights reserved. The text and images within
this web document may not be used or reproduced in any form or by any means,
or stored in a public database retrieval system, without prior written or
electronic permission of the author. Reproduced on SpaceRef with the permission of the author.