Katy Quinn’s Devon Island Journal: July 9, 2001

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

Monday evening, July 9.  HMP camp life.

My second day at the Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) camp is coming to an
end.  It’s late in the evening and this journal entry is my last task
before going to bed.  What is life like at the base camp?  Well,
I can’t say that today was a typical day (I only have a sample size of
two) but I’ll give you a run down of what I got up to:

1 am: woke up to the sound of rain on my tent, after checking that
everything is snug I fall back to sleep.

4 to 5:30 am: woke up again and couldn’t get back to sleep, mostly
because of the bright light.  Finally managed to fall asleep again.

7 am:  alarm goes off, I’m still groggy and I inadvertently fall
back asleep.

8:10 am:  wake up, say a few choice words, realize I’m going to
miss breakfast (7:30 to 8:30 am) and the 8:30 am all hands briefing if
I don’t get going.

8:29:59 am:  enter the mess tent and grab something to eat while
I listen to the briefing, John the camp manager asks the 2nd phase crew
to help lay water line to the FMARS habitat.

9 am: Marc, the Johnson Space Center liaison (and camp cook), goes
over the habitability assessment questionnaire we’ll be filling out in
the hab.

9:30 am: the water line work detail is ready to go, we head over the
the FMARS hab with ATVs.

10:30 to 12 noon: after poking around the hab site for a little bit
we get to work laying the water line, all 3600 feet of it.

12 noon:  a well deserved lunch break.

1 pm: start working on the informal talk I’m giving after dinner, I
go over to the Discovery Channel tent to borrow a comm line and download
some stuff I need.

2 pm (?):  download some software for Bill Clancey’s weather station
onto my laptop and try to get it working, having some problems connecting
with the transmitter.

3 pm (?):  go to river to finish the water line, we have to build
some rock piles in the river to keep the line out of the current. 
Wet, cold work.

5 pm: go back to working on my talk.

6 pm: dinner time, I finish quickly so I can go over some last minute
notes for my talk.

7 pm:  evening all hands briefing, we get reports and the day
and requests for tomorrow.

7:30 pm – 8 pm:  I give an informal presentation that are a tradition
at HMP base camp.  Mine was on ICESat, the satellite laser altimetry
mission I’m doing some work on.

9 pm:  after hanging out and chatting after the talk I head over
to the work tent to start writing this journal entry

This time line doesn’t include messing around on the computer with
my digital pictures, chatting to people, and standing in the sun and soaking
when it came out from behind the clouds.

There’s still some work to be done at the FMARS habitat  because
of the late start, so that has occupied people’s time.  Tomorrow myself
and Vladimir (another phase 2 person) will try find time and available
ATVs to test out his seismic survey equipment.  I’m looking forward
to moving into the habitat tomorrow evening.  The outside visit we
made today was a wonderful preview, the view across the crater was relatively
clear and I could see the pale gray impact breccias in the distance. 
Coming up to the habitat for the first time was surreal.  After so
much anticipation and studying of diagrams and pictures, there it was in
real life.  Bigger than I imagined it would be.  Steve Braham’s
comms dish to the side gives the setting a very futuristic feel and a tangible
connection to the outside world.  Here’s hoping I sleep better tonight,
it’ll be a big day tomorrow.

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.