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

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

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