This year’s event offers something for every interest. For those who have been closely following the FMARS field season at Devon Island, we will have a full report from team members, a new video offering from Sam Burbank, and a full track devoted to reporting the results of the research. Aspiring astronauts will enjoy hearing the first female shuttle commander, Eileen Collins, speak on her space flight experiences. U.S. Space Camp offers a discovery day for students which promises to be loads of fun. Science fiction fans will especially enjoy the author’s panel on Friday night. Other highlights include updates and discussion on the possibility of life on Mars, a vital dialogue on the environmental engineering of a sustainable ecosystem, reports from many of our partners in space advocacy, including the Planetary Society, the International Space University and Yuri’s Night and much more. A complete, up-to-date schedule of the conference will be posted at The Mars Society website – www.marssociety.org – within the next day or two.
FMARS Daily Narrative Report – Pascal Lee – August 14, 2001
This evening the crew of Phase 6 had their first EVA. Just a local one around the Habitat for the new crew members to familiarize themselves with the procedures. The plan was to scout out a location to set up a wind turbine in the next few days. The turbine will provide power through the winter for a set of environmental sensors at the FMARS. If all goes well, the data should be accessible this winter via satellite. This experiment is the result of a collaboration involving George James and Kevin Shoemaker of the Mars Society.
Mars pioneer says simulation isn
Spending weeks in isolation with your crewmates as part of a simulated mission to Mars may sound like the concept for a frivolous reality-TV show, but one of the commanders of this summer
Celestial simulation The Holland Sentinel
A former Zeeland man is participating in a science project in the Arctic that could help NASA prepare for a manned trip to Mars. Brent Bos, 31, is a member of one of the crews at Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, participating in a Mars mission simulation through the NASA-Haughton Mars Project and the Mars Society. NASA researchers have traveled annually to the 12-mile-wide Haughton Crater on Devon Island because it’s similar to the terrain on Mars. “This is the first year the Mars Society has run its human Mars mission simulation,” said Bos, a 1988 Holland Christian graduate who studied honors physics at the University of Michigan. “It’s meant to help us learn the procedures and gain data for planning a human mission to Mars.
FMARS Daily Narrative Report – Pascal Lee – August 8, 2001
This afternoon our information systems field integration tests with the Hamilton-Sundstrand concept spacesuit were taken one step further. The focus was on securing a short-range wireless communications link between a suited explorer and other supporting explorers, say crewmembers in a nearby pressurized rover. The supporting crewmembers would help the explorer view maps, position information or any other data requested by the suited explorer to help him/her carry out the task at hand successfully.
FMARS Daily Narrative Report – Pascal Lee – August 7, 2001
Today was a day of logistical preparations for upcoming higher fidelity EVA simulations. I spent part of the day at the HMP Base Camp with the newly arrived team from Hamilton-Sundstrand Space Systems International Inc., an aerospace firm currently under contract at NASA to develop and support life support systems for EVA on the Shuttle and ISS programs. Engineers Michael Boucher and Sean Murray form the team representing Hamilton-Sundstrand and the research group led there by Ed Hogdson and Ella Kisilis.
FMARS Daily Narrative Report – Pascal Lee – August 6, 2001
Monday we went on Phase 5’s first EVA. The target site was “Site 10”, a location selected last week by the Science Operations team gathered at NASA Ames Research Center. They picked an interesting location, a banana-shaped pond the length of a football field with some intriguing little gullies on the side valley walls. The Sci Ops team ranked “Site 10” among the highest priority ones they had. It seemed interesting not only for geology but also for biology. We would have to sample water from the small lake.
High Drama on the Red Planet The Grand Rapids Press
It’s probably a good thing Brent Bos wasn’t really on the surface of Mars. If he had been on the Red Planet, the former Zeeland resident might not be heading back home today. “We didn’t need any simulated drama. We had quite enough of the real thing,” Bos wrote in an e-mail as he entered his last week at a simulation site on Devon Island in Canada’s High Arctic. Bos, a researcher at the University of Arizona, completed 10 days of a simulated human mission to Mars at a site on Earth that most resembles the distant planet. The summer project, sponsored by the Colorado-based Mars Society, continues with other teams through August.
FMARS Narrative Report
For the fifth day in a row we are engulfed in thick fog. The fog lifted briefly this afternoon allowing 15 field participants to depart from Haughton, including Lucas Allakariallak, John Blitch, Brent Bos, Charles Frankel, AC Hitch, Greg Klerkx, Larry Lemke, Arnis Mangolds, Peter Smith, Carol Stoker, and my brother Marco. The planes that pulled them out arrived at Haughton full of supplies. But when it came time to fly in new participants, the weather closed in again and they were unable to come. We are now completely fogged in, with visibilities down to 50 meters at times.
FMARS Daily Narrative Report – Pascal Lee – July 31, 2001
The day was devoted to executing a simulated EVA with a science agenda proposed by the Science Operations team at NASA Ames Research Center and with overall mission support from the Mission Support team in Denver. We went to “Site 6, an area presenting a beautiful network of small valleys visited the previous day by the Titan robot in teleoperated mode. The main goal of the EVA was to determine the origin of the small valleys.