Crew of seven pursuing Mars exploration knowledge from high Canadian Arctic during long duration simulated mission

Ryan Kobrick

F-XI LDM Human Factors Researcher / Crew Engineer

The sun rose over the snow-covered terrain as we began our four-month simulated Mars expedition at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in the high Canadian Arctic on Devon Island, Nunavut. But the sun will never set during our mission. This is the first time a simulated mission at an analogue station has ever been conducted for this long. The crew of 7 is conducting over 15 projects including field science in geology, biology, limnology, and paleolimnology, studies in engineering (such as a water study), and six human factors studies. The highlight of the human factors is about to begin when the crew goes on ‘Mars Time’ for the entire month of July. With an extra 39 minutes added to every day the crew will slowly drift out of sync with everyone back on Earth. The crew is composed of university graduate students and faculty, so the adaptation to a Martian Day probably won’t disturb our circadian rhythms (since they never have been stable).

My role with the crew is to facilitate the human factors studies, which include exercise, communication, habitability, group dynamics, sleep, and ‘Mars Time’. It has been a challenging role and difficult to keep everyone on track without pushing them to hard to complete the tasks. The tasks include online surveys, reaction tests, exercise bike, and other gear such as LifeShirts for sleep.

We are on top of the world during the IPY (pretty close to the magnetic North Pole,) and we hope that our work helps bring humankind one-step closer to Mars!

Space!

Ryan

--

For more information about the crew and mission please visit: www.fmars2007.org

Posted by Pradeep [Polar] ( June 30, 2007 02:05 AM ) Permalink

Ideas

Kirk used to run this blog. He says its now in my hands.

I would like to say that the focus of this blog has changed very slightly. It still deals with International Heliophysical and Polar Years, but I would like to strech what that encompasses.

I not only would like to focus attention on the scientific and technical aspects of the work but also want an artistic and real experiences to figure.

All ideas, suggestions are welcome. Feel free to spread the word :).

Kirk is still the admin though and has kept me away from the design part.

Posted by Pradeep [General] ( May 15, 2007 02:35 AM ) Permalink

The Sun from Udaipur

Post by Prof. P. Venkatakrishnan, Senior Professor and Head, Academic Faculty, Udaipur Solar Observatory

Nestling in a small valley surrounded by foothills of the Aravali mountains, and perched on a small island in the middle of lake Fatehsagar in the beautiful town of Udaipur, the Udaipur Solar Observatory is a must-see for all lovers of beauty and the sun. Right now there are 3 telescopes on the island. One is for getting full disk pictures of the solar chromosphere (a layer of hot plasma sandwiched between the cooler photosphere and the super hot one million degree corona). The other is a spar (a moving optical bench tracking the sun) which obtains chromospheric pictures with higher spatial resolution (zoomed picture) of selected portions of the sun. The third telescope is a state-of-the-art solar vector magnetograph, which is a joy for geeks who love gadgets. This telescope not only obtains the maps of the line-of-sight magnetic field, but also the other 2 components of the vector field. These two components allow us to determine the twistedness or curled up nature of the magnetic field. The energy stored in tightly wound up fields sporadically erupts in the form of flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These ejecta travel across the interplanetary medium and hit the earth’s magnetosphere. Under conditions when the inter-planetary magnetic field (IMF) is oppositely directed to the geo-magnetic field, the interaction between the magnetic cloud (evolved CME) and the earth’s magnetosphere results in a magnetic storm, which causes different kinds of disturbances. Our mandate at USO is to 1) monitor the solar chromosphere for flares and 2) do research on solar magnetism to attempt prediction of eruptive phenomena.

There is another subtle aspect of solar activity that is very interesting for global warming: the IMF deflects part of the earth-ward moving cosmic rays and thus modulates the cosmic ray flux as a function of the solar cycle (11 year period). There are some people who are seriously working on the ionization of neutral atoms of earth’s atmosphere by cosmic rays. These ions can act as nucleating centres for water condensation to produce clouds. Question raised is whether cloud coverage is modulated in this way by solar activity? A blunt answer would be no, maybe just a fraction of a percent, compared to regular nucleators like dust and other aerosols. But then, should we completely ignore this effect? Answer is not very clear. There are other empirical relationships between length of the solar cycle (periods range from 9 to 13 years) and the terrestrial temperature, which we solar physicists are nowhere near any understanding. Thus, you can see that this is an exciting area of study, apart from the “regular” studies of sun, where we can now even probe the interior using sound waves (helioseismology: study of solar oscillations). Did you know that the so-called solar neutrino problem (poor unsuspecting Raymond Davis set up an experiment in the ‘70s to detect the neutrinos from the sun and found only a third of the elusive critters: the current understanding is that neutrinos change their “flavor” from electron to tau and muon neutrinos, the early expts detected only electron neutrionos and hence the deficit – new expts which detect all 3 flavors find the total number to as expected by theory of nuclear reactions in the solar core. Happy ending – Ray gets the Nobel, way to go Ray!) was solved because helioseismology restricted the solar models so tightly, that people had to find non-solar reasons for the neutrino deficit.

Currently our observatory has 4 faculty, 3 scientists, 2 technical assistants, 1 lab assistant,  3 tradesmen, & 3 administrative staff. Apart from that we have 4 PhD students (JRF), 2 project associates and 1 library trainee. A “small but happy family”, as the saying goes. Some information is available on our web page. We have just started a small canteen and hope to “keep the wolf at the door”.

Nature lovers will have a great time on our main campus as well as on the island. The main campus building houses the computer centre, several laboratories (adaptive optics, instrumentation, and data archival labs). The instrumentation lab keeps churning out new instruments. The solar vector magnetograph was developed here. The adaptive optics lab is dedicated to developing an adaptive optics system. In this system, the solar images, which get blurred by the turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere, are corrected on-line and stored. Considering that the “turn over time” for the turbulent eddies is a few tens of milliseconds, the whole process of sensing the wave-front aberrations, calculating the compensating voltages to be applied to a deformable mirror, and actually applying the corrections should be done within a few milliseconds. We have achieved this recently using a combination of hardware and software components that would be attractive to computer enthusiasts. We want to make the whole system faster, if possible, using the latest GPUs used in gaming consoles. Anybody interested out there?

The future….?

We will have our new Belgium made 50 cm solar telescope by March 2009. Meanwhile, we are designing and fabricating some superb back-end instruments. We are also into space payloads, jointly developing a space coronagraph with other institutions like IIA, ARIES, and SAID/ISAC/ISRO. We are also going to use a night-time 1.2 m telescope of the Osmania University in novel ways to get solar data (anybody in Hyderabad area interested in participating?). Plenty of challenges for the brave-hearts. To join USO as a PhD student or as a postdoctoral fellow, please look at http://www.prl.res.in for procedures. PhD holders in areas related to plasma physics, instrumentation, astrophysics, quantum physics, wishing to do postdoctoral work on newly opening areas of solar physics can write to me (pvk@prl.res.in) as also those 3^rd year B.Sc and 1^st year M.Sc. students who want to do summer projects

Posted by Pradeep [Solar] ( May 03, 2007 09:44 AM ) Permalink

Permission To Dream

We have plans but we have not done anything big yet as for this year's celebration of International Heliophysical Year 2007. As of today, we are still stuck on an international project called Permission To Dream based on Los Angeles, US. Our achievements in this project include huge participation of school students and public in different parts of the nation in marveling the night sky wonders through the telescope and curriculum provided by the project. After recently being affiliated to SEDS, we are yet to announce some programs as SEDS-Nepal. [Read More]

Posted by pradipt [General] ( April 26, 2007 12:00 AM ) Permalink

This is how Frozen Sun works...

The basic formula for this blog: an "expert" creates a post, the audience asks questions, and then the poster answers questions. Nothing complicated. Yuki will be "on call" to answer questions until 16 April, when a new post regarding IPY will be made from Nigeria. Ask a question or leave a comment by going to the "Comments" link at the bottom of his post.

First solar post coming soon from NASA Goddard. Stay tuned...

 

Note: comments closed 

Posted by kittell [General] ( March 29, 2007 02:35 PM ) Permalink

The Origin of the Big Bang... from the South Pole.

Shouldn't be called an "expert", but I have been working with a team on a new telescope that we set up at the South Pole to learn about how the Big Bang started.  We know that our universe had what we call the "Big Bang", meaning that it seems to have started from a tiny volume of concentrated energy, which then expanded as the universe itself stretched to the huge volume we see today.  What may sound amazing is that we can still "see" the radiation from that beginning when the universe was much more concentrated and hotter.  It's called the cosmic microwave background radiation.  Astrophysicists in the 1960s detected this radiation (Nobel Prize) and in the 1980s found fluctuations of it across the sky (Nobel Prize 2006).  We think these fluctuations came from quantum fluctuations that got stretched during the first tiny fraction of a second of the Big Bang when the universe seems have inflated extraordinarily fast, seeding density fluctuations that eventually became galaxy clusters of today.  We also think that this initial "Inflation" produced ripples in space-time called the "gravity waves", which has never been detected yet.  If we can learn about these gravity waves, we can get clues about the ultimate question of how the Big Bang started.

To look for a sign of these gravity waves in the radiation from the Big Bang, our team of ~10 astrophysicists (Caltech/JPL, UC Berkeley, UCSD) developed a telescope and set it up at the South Pole last year.  Because the microwave radiation gets blocked by water molecules (as you know with microwave ovens), we chose the site with the least amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.  The South Pole is at ~2800 meter altitude, above much of the water vapor, and its cold air doesn't hold much moisture.  It's the best site on Earth for studying the cosmic microwave background, although going to outer space is even better!

Ours is actually a precursor to a space-based telescope (Inflation Probe).  Just like in any space mission, we kept the telescope compact to save cost while meeting the required performance.  Because the site is so remote and not easily accessible, we designed and developed the telescope's motion control system and various electronics to be very reliable.

After shipping out most of our telescope parts in October 2005, I flew to the South Pole in November with 2 other members of our team.  We began setting up our lab and our telescope in a new empty building about 1 km walk from the main station (which is right by the geographic pole).  Even in -45°C weather with winds, walking in a gear almost as bulky as the spacesuit makes you warm.  The desolateness made me wonder if it was anything like being on the Moon...  More of our team arrived later and some went back.  By the end of my 2-month deployment, we were able to get the telescope working.  From March to October 2006, we used our telescope to map a small patch of the sky, integrating down in search of what's expected to be a very tiny gravity-wave signal.

After a successful year of observations, my teammates and I went to the South Pole again to replace several of the telescope's ~100 detectors and calibrate them.  We recently returned to California and are starting our 2nd year of observations.  The gravity-wave signal from Inflation is likely to be at least an order of magnitude smaller than even the current WMAP satellite has been able to sense.  By concentrating on a small patch of the sky with our array of sensitive detectors, we may have a chance.  In any case, our experiment will be able to narrow down the possible explanations for how the Big Bang began.

Through our exploration of the beginning of the universe, it has been a privilege to be able to explore one end of the Earth.  Some day, I would like to try living at the South Pole through its dark cold winter.  And eventually, I would also like to go to the South Pole of the Moon.  As we begin to try going to the Moon, there are probably a lot to learn from experiences in Antarctica.

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to ask any questions!

Posted by yukimoon [Polar] ( March 28, 2007 02:28 AM ) Permalink

Prototype

If you found this site -- great. Let me explain what it is so that you come back when it kicks off in a few weeks.

There are two international events occurring in 2007: the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. I like space science, though it is not my strength (I'm an engineer by practice). And here on seds.org, we just set up these wonderful blogs last year; you can start your own if you'd like. I wanted to mash all of this together and set up a blog where others could learn about the role that space technology plays in the studies of IHY and IPY.

Experts will be invited to come and post about their activities or about interesting phenomena every week, and students will be encouraged to visit and ask questions and make comments. Each expert will be asked to monitor the blog for two weeks after their post to answer questions.

This project will start in March with a solar scientist from NASA, then with a representiative from the IPY Youth Steering Committee in Nigeria (and president of the SEDS affiliate in Nigeria, the African Association of Physics Students), Olumuyiwa Oke. Then the next week will be a solar post, then a polar post, then solar, polar, solar, polar, etc. If you would like to help -- as a professional willing to post to students or as a student willing to contact professionals to post -- please email international@seds.org. See you in a few weeks.

Posted by kittell [General] ( March 05, 2007 11:42 AM ) Permalink