Haughton-Mars Project (HMP-2001 REPORT: 010629)

By: Dr. Pascal Lee

The past few days have seen beautiful weather in Resolute Bay, with
deep blue skies and almost uninterrupted sunshine. Winds have been
slight. If only we were on Devon…

There is still too much snow on Devon Island for us to “put-in” by
Twin Otter airplane, but the situation is now improving rapidly.
On Wednesday reports from pilots flying over our airstrip indicated
that the snow cover was down to 50%. Today, Friday, we were down to 25%.
We are now planning to attempt a direct fly-in on Sunday morning,
the earliest option in the opinion of First Air pilots who know the
Arctic well. The first plane would fly in light, with just a few
passengers equipped with shovels to sweep off any remaining snow and
get the Base Camp and FMARS going. Later that same day, more planes
would fly in with the rest of our team, more camp gear and supplies.
At least that’s the plan. The helicopter we had considered using a few
days ago is not available at this time, as it was also much delayed on
its way up to Resolute and is now mobilized for its primary mission at
the Noranda camp on northern Devon.

Our team in Resolute Bay this evening comprises Joe Amarualik, Steve
Braham, Sam Burbank, Charlie Cockell, Rainer Effenhauser, Trish Garner,
AC Hitch, Colleen Lenahan, Samson Ootoovak, Gordon “Oz” Osinski, Matthew
Pudluk, Frank Schubert, Andy Schuerger, John Schutt, Mark Webb, the
Discovery Channel crew of 8, and me.

Rainer Effenhauser M.D., is the Chief Flight Surgeon of the Space Shuttle
program at NASA JSC. He joined us in Resolute Bay late last night after
an unanticipated night in Yellowknife where the “west jet” was
delayed by 24 hours due to bad weather. Rainer is participating in the
NASA HMP for a second year in a row. He will be carrying out a variety
of studies in expeditionary medicine, telemedicine, environmental
monitoring, and human biology, all of which is of interest to NASA for
the current International Space Station program and for planning possible
future human exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit. Rainer will be
our Medical Officer on the first FMARS crew rotation this year. He gave
us all a good medical briefing after dinner this evening, just before
another good briefing from Steve and Trish on the use of our new HMP
field safety radio system.

One good thing about the snow delay is that it’s giving us some time to
hold a few more field planning meetings.