Tiriganiaq (CREW 19) Sol 8 Report 22-7-2026

Today was another packed day for Crew 19. As we sat together sharing a warm dinner, each one of us named a petal and a thorn of the day – a highlight and a challenge that made the day memorable.

Adrian: 

Petal: At the end of the day finding that big impact breccia site – the area beneath the crater that was fractured and shattered by the impact that made the crater, located low enough down below the impact site so it wasn’t melted. It had all the minerals that help classify the history of the crater and will be useful for radioisotope analysis. When I get back home I hope to use this to learn more about cooling history and fluid inclusion studies. Some of the crystals I found today may turn out to be time capsules of water from 30 million years ago and may reveal interesting things about water chemistry from a long time ago.

Thorn: Getting to the site where we’d mired the ATV in mud yesterday, successfully recovering it, and then realizing we’d punctured a tire. 

Trevor:

Petal: I loved getting to do a community outreach event online with students. I felt very fortunate to have that opportunity. We’ve worked so hard to do so many special activities out here during this mission. It was one of the most special outreach events I’ve done in a long time because I had so many interesting things to talk about, and provide real world examples of how the work we are doing here is relevant. I was able to communicate how exciting working in spaceflight is, and that kids shouldn’t give up if they don’t have a knack for things at first. People aren’t born good at math, they can get better at it and if they need help they can ask their teachers for help. Teachers love to help! Overall, it was a big hit and I’m really thankful for the successful mission that hopefully gave these inquisitive kids more to dream about.

Thorn: Finding out that we rescued an ATV just to lose another ATV, in the exact same place.

Laura:

Petal: I have two of them! The first is watching Adrian run around doing his thing, in the zone; I’ve never seen someone so determined and so agile, he’s like a mountain goat. The second is the last site that we went to, seeing the rocks and the way they looked painted, like an artwork. It had a pattern like a matrix that had been put there by design. The colors were incredible.

Thorn: I was sad that Trevor and Rand weren’t there to see these things too, and I’m also really tired after three busy weeks at the hab.

Anderson:

Petal: Everyone came back from the EVA safely. Can’t go wrong there. I also thought it was a pretty cool thing to see watching Adrian do his thing, and to be there to support him in his work. We recovered a rover, that was pretty good.

Thorn: We lost a rover, that was pretty bad.

Rand:

Petal: Getting updates from the EVA team and tracking their progress via radio and on GPS as they traveled from one waypoint to another. I also got the opportunity to help them sleuth out one mystery in particular. For safety reasons they wanted to know if some poop they had stumbled upon might have been left by a polar bear but didn’t know exactly what polar bear poop looks like. My initial search turned up nearly all hits about a research study that involved polar bears ingesting glitter to make their poop easier to track. With the EVA crew in a particularly windy spot, apparently my response came through as “[STATIC STATIC] glitter poop [STATIC] over.”

Thorn: A little bit of jealousy about what the EVA team encountered today. Okay, a lot of jealousy. But I am really enjoying hearing all about it at the end of the day.