Sol Summary – July 25th

Written by Jon Clarke

Sol 6 (or 86)

You won’t read it in “The National Enquirer” but you will read it here: Mosquitoes on Mars!

The wind and dropped and it wasn’t raining so Paul, Yusuke donned the EVA suits and with and Anastasiya as shotgun took the quad bikes into the crater on EVA 5 to follow up their reconnaissance during EVA 4. The aim was to study the polygons, trenching them to find the permafrost and mapping them with 3-D imagery. They were unable to find the permafrost, it was below the practical trenching depth in the suits (0.5 m) but they obtained some great 3-D imagery. It was while the trenching was taking place that the mosquitoes appeared. Whether it was due to the location near a creek, the progress of summer, or the smell of fresh astronaut, a regular swarm of them appeared. Fortunately the helmets seem to keep the worst of them off, except for Anastasiya.

Yusuke produced some nice 3-D images of the trenching and the polygon, thus replicating the achievements of the Phoenix mission on Mars.

They then thought they would explore further into the crater, but the weather closed in. Still no wind, but a misty rain began to fall. Those of us in the hab kept an eye on the blanket of sea fog on the horizon, hovering over the inlets to the north east, it is stayed whether it was. The EVA team wisely decided to abort their reconnaissance and head home, arriving home a little damp but safe.