E-Logbook

MIT Haughton Mars Expedition 2005

 

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July 23, 2005

Written by: Matthew Silver

 

Today was spent getting Sarah and Jaemyung set up in their workspace, exchanging information, and ensuring that the ATV experiment is set to run continuously until the end of camp. We showed Sarah and Jaemyung Mike’s software application for tracking passive RFID tags and for the ATV experiment, went over the relational database, and reviewed inventory progress and other issues. Again the ATV experiment was acting funny until we discovered that one of the antennas is not functioning. It has likely been broken since we arrived, since we found that reading tags with the 2450 reader has been inconsistent all trip. With one antenna up the reading accuracy will decrease, so we are compensating by putting two tags on each ATV. Below is a picture of Jaemyung next to the ATV gate on airport, and one of Matt testing a tag location on the ATV. You can see the tag aligned vertically between the handlebars. This was not a good place for reading, most likely because of the metal behind it and the somewhat obstructed view through the handlebars.

 

 

 

John Schutt set up the diesel heater in the MIT tent today and it ran even with the weather being rather nice. At this point in the trip for Mike and me it feels like Bermuda in here. It seems that Sarah and Jaemyung young may never experience working on a laptop in an unheated tent in the arctic—something which they are definitely happy about!  In fact, we are now very comfortably installed in the tent and in general. It is a great space to do work.

 

Below is a picture of the tent with a new MIT banner that Sarah and Jaemyung brought with them, and also our setup inside with the new heater on the right.

 

 

I should also note that Marc Boucher, the co-founder of Space Ref and CEO of the Mars Institute, is going to run a piece on our project. It should appear at: http://www.spaceref.com/ There are also pictures from the field season on Space Ref. A news reporter, Mona Khannan, from CBS Dallas also arrived on a twin otter today, together with Jeff Jones a doctor at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Mona will be doing a general news piece on HMP. Tomorrow we are expecting a news team from Discovery Canada, who are doing a very large three-part documentary on Mars.