Date and time: 28 April 2012
Written by: Haritina Mogosanu, Crew 118, Commander
The first scheduled connection KiwiMars - Antipodes with the press conference in Austria took place this morning at 0800 hrs.
Former MDRS commander (AustroMars 2006) and president of the Austrian Space Forum, Gernot Groemer and his team are trialling the Aouda.X Mars Suit in the Dachstein Caves. The link was made possible via video-Skype (which 'ate' our entire bandwidth) but gave me the chance to say "hallo" and introduce our work at MDRS to the Austrian media which was present at the experiment's site in Dachstein.
After talking to Aouda.X on the other side of the world, breakfast was waiting on the table and we planned the field trip about to occur.
We loaded up snacks, water, GPSs and cameras and away we went!
This was a journey, not a trip. It made me think how important it is to undergo field days/ programmes such as this one. We were quite lucky to have Jon training us, he has been with MDRS almost from the beginning and trained numerous crews as part of the Spaceward Bound MDRS programme of NASA AMES. Jon Rask is the main author of the NASA Spaceward Bound field training curriculum which we hope to be able to somehow adapt and use in New Zealand for planetary sciences. I am very pleased we learnt from the best; the day was very special. A huge thank you to Jon for his time!
We started the journey with the area around the hab, which is teeming with life!
then drove to Lith Canyon,
Box Canyon
and the Henry Mountains.
The peak of the day for me was being (almost) on top of the Henry Mountains and looking back in time over the different geological eras - something that most of us don't get to see every day.
After the trip we returned to our BAU (business as usual activities).
I am very pleased that I could find a feasible solution to the telescope balancing issue (which arose last night) and whilst Mike interviewed Jon, I engineered a new dimension to the telescope counterweighting art by using some dumbbell weights which were laying around anyway.
As the two current counterweights of the telescope proved to be too light for the new addition - the C-4 (which by the way stands for Celestron 4 inch), add to that the fact that there is a Dumbbell Nebula in the sky... using the exercising weights felt somehow astronomical as they fit like a glove on a longer screw (which DG provided for me upon special request) and the problem was solved! Voila! Tomorrow I hope to finalise the polar alignments and mount the camera. Why does this seems like a deja vu from last year?
I would have stayed longer by the telescope as I always do but had to prepare for the Operation Antipodes which is happening this morning at 0200 hrs.
Defocused view of the Eastern Horizon to enhance the colours of the stars.
Grus constellation at the top center - looks like a doubled cross.
The sky tonight was amazing and I took plenty of astrophotos through my camera. (At this hour of the night I wish either a. I had a clone or b. the day had 48 hours and I did not require sleep!)
Off to Antipodes 1 and clear skies from Mars!
ENDS.