Sol Summary – July 29th

Jon Clarke

Sol 10 (or 90)

Since we started rather late yesterday morning I set the alarm for 7:30. Funny how much harder it is to get up when the alarm tells you it’s time!

The weather was windy today but not raining, apart from occasional light showers. Not as windy as some previous days.

We were able to do our long EVA today, the one we had oped to do yesterday. Anushree, myself (in suits) and Paul (shotgun) got away at nine and worked our way to towards the Haughton crater. It was very cold, driving into a SE wind. So we stopped every 20-30 minutes or so to walk round to get the circulation going. We made sure that these were at sites of interest. Had to ford the creeks multiple times, but this was no big drama. The first stop was at the first good melt sheet deposit, which looks for all the world like broken concrete. The second at some large breccia masses. Our third stop was at a complex of brecciated but in situ interbedded dolostone and gypsum overlain by polymict (many different rock types) breccia, a spectacular outcrop that Professor Oskinski of the University of Western Ontario has designated a “supersite” because of the number of key features of Haughton crater geology that it illustrates. We got far enough east that we could see the valley of the Haughton River, unfortunately misty rain was blowing up it and we decided to turn round. Still we were able to get all the samples we set out to achieve, so this was a very successful EVA. Arrived back at the station at 2 pm for a very welcome and very late lunch.

In the afternoon we did a group exercise as part of the Institute of Bio-Medical Problems in Moscow’s research program in the Mars 160 expeditions. We had to discuss a scenario while our interaction was videoed. We also have fortnightly tests and twice weekly diary entries to do for them.

Paul is cooking street style tacos using tortilla’s tonight. Tomorrow will be a rest day. Because we can sleep in we will be watching “Rogue One” – half the crew haven’t seen it!