NASA AMASE 2008: Day 4: A Good Field Day

August 7, 2008 / Written by: Jason

Today it is snowing on and off, with what looks to be very poor visibility on the higher slopes. One team went ashore and headed up the volcano to carry out surveys and obtain samples for the habitability studies. The visibility at a two hundred meters was poor enough that we decided to sample the region we could see – rather than proceed higher and have snow cover over the area. Sampling went very well, as didi the in-situ measurements related to the general environment. Petter and Henrik, and Marc kept a sharp watch for polar bears, due to the short warning we would have if one happened upon us. All went well – Michaela and I were quite pleased with the clean sampling technique we used for the SAM samples.
The geology team climbed to the cave at 400 meters elevation, set up a tent with analysis equipment and brewed up some strong espresso. Svein-Erika is now an honorary field geologist, and reports that this geology stuff is good!
Andrea went to the field with FTIR, which performed very well.
A good field day – we are forming into a real team.