NASA AMASE 2008: Day 3: Ice Cores Return and Field Instruments
August 6, 2008 / Written by: Jason
Eilif has us participating in a Lance tradition – a daily photo contest open to everyone on the ship. Each day has a theme such as ‘landscape’ or ‘light’ and all entries are due by 10 pm in the bridge – images as taken without any processing with software. All of us, AMASErs and Lance crew alike are avidly printing out our best shots.the judge is Kjell Ove – our brilliant expedition photographer – who not only documents the expedition but is an experienced arctic explorer who knows so much about this arctic world – he helps keep us all safe and well. All entries regardless of ranking get his comments and insightful critique on the back. Am very proud of my second place landscape – of which Kjell Ove said: “a beautiful classic landscape, well balanced and good to look at.” Today I was part of a team that went back to the glacier to retrieve the ice cores – originally intended to be retrieved by helicopter, but now to be packed out by AMASE ‘mules’ – the backup plan. The WISDOM team (Svein-Erik and Mats) joined us to begin the Ground Penetrating Radar study of the ice depth and other transitions at the top meter or so of the glacier. The hike up the glacier was great – were dropped off by boat on a perfect little beach just in front of the glacier, and was a short hike up to the cores. As the ice-girls (Jen and Liane) with Paolo helping set about drilling a couple of additional cores, and as our leader Pan and Dominique kept watch for polar bears – I found this place so quiet and calm and beautiful that I decided to take a nap.set up some pads, pulled my hood down over my eyes, and just drifted off. We brought all the cores down and they are safely in the ice lab – also known as the ‘red tent’ as it is an on-deck facility the ship’s crew set up for the processing of the cores. A second team including a good number of ‘mules’ was all set ashore and on deck to go hike back up to Troll springs to pack the water samples out when the Helicopter , taking advantage of an opportune break in the weather providing good visibility to land on Lance’s helipad, showed up with a team of Japanese scientists. This nixed the back up water retrieval plan, and the helicopter retrieved all the water for the Troll Patrol’s analysis on board.
Nicole took Pamcam out to the field, in the vicinity destined to be ‘Mars’ for the upcoming Mars Science Operations exercise. She did imaging and set about checking and operating pancam with very good results. Fernando took the Raman/IR contact instrument out to the same site as pancam to take some measurements and prepare for the Operations exercise. The Sailboat Libra set sail from Longyearbyen with the two SAM boxes safely aboard, headed to Bockfjorden. We ate Morten’s wonderful fresh fish for dinner – cooked with a marvelous rich cream sauce. Was a great AMASE day.
