NASA Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition Field Report: Keeping It Clean – 14 August 2006

Monday

There are a couple quirks I’ve noticed living on the Lance. One is that when we are anchored in a fjord, the entire ship slowly spins around the anchor. It doesn’t spin enough to sit still and notice, but every time I walk onto deck I have to re-orient myself with the shore.

Today our three-day spell of gorgeous weather in Bockfjorden ended. It was cold and quite windy. Our work on the lower slope of Sverrefjell has finished and we are moving to the other side of the fjord to the Devonian Redbed deposits. Steelie, Terry (of the JPL rover crew, he actually is one of the MER drivers back at JPL!), and Jake went out to scout a suitable deployment site for the cliff-bot in the Redbeds. In the meantime, a large troupe of us had to go back to the lower slope of Sverrfjell where we had cached the heavy rover equipment and carry it to the shore and boat it across Bockfjorden.

We also spent some time doing environmental cleanup. Norway and Svalbard cherish their beautiful and pristine lands and have worked very hard to keep them preserved. Most of our field sites are within protected preserves and parks and access is very limited. To be allowed to work here we have had to get permission from the Governor of Svalbard. As an expedition, we also take the preservation of these sites very seriously and spent a while this morning combing our lower slope site replacing rocks, mosses and removing tracks we had created over the last few days. We try to leave the sites as pristine as possible to preserve them for future generations. It saddens me to think that our careless actions today can prevent my children from experiencing the natural beauty of Earth I have been fortunate enough to witness.

Kirsten Fristad
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center