AMASE Blog entry for Aug 5, 2009

by Adrienne Kish

The sun was shining on the glaciers all day yesterday, giving us a chance to take some spectacular photos in between projects. It also resulted in an abundance of ‘small’ icebergs let loose into the water in the bay, so we were treated to a flotilla of blue ice moving slowly past the windows of the Marinlab facility while we worked. We were able to review cleaning protocols for instruments involved in analyses ranging from biology to organic chemistry. This also provided an opportunity a lot of laughter with AMASErs in clean room suits doing interpretive dances of the motions of cellular molecules that gave researchers from other groups working in the Marinlab some entertainment value.

The project for the next few days is rover operations with engineers putting the Athena rover to work picking up rocks with the bio team does planetary protection studies to determine rover cleaning and handling protocols so as to not introduce biological contamination from us to the rover. Meanwhile the rest of the AMASE team is assembling in Longyear going through lists of supplies and getting ready to load up the research vessel Lance before swinging up to NyAlesund to pick us up on Aug 10 on the way to the fjords for sample collection.