| Oct. 2nd, 2002—Pre-Expedition
Activity
Nathalie A. Cabrol
Day -14 before departure!
The entire team is gearing up (literally…)
and we are now busy finalizing our equipment and
experiments. I believe we should be close to 450
pounds of equipment in the end and this is only
of science instrumentation and all that will be
necessary to accomplish our various tasks once
in the field. Fortunately, everything will be
shipped in advance this Friday from the SETI Institute.
The boxes will arrive a bit before us in Chile
where Guillermo will take care of getting them
out of the customs.
A lot goes into the preparation of an expedition.
It is especially complex because we have two teams:
Team A, which will ascend Licancabur, and Team
B which will be based in Antofagasta at the Universidad
Católica del Norte (UCN). Those two teams
have different logistics and different needs.
Team B is our biology team, with Imre, Roseli,
Cecilia, Keve, and Istvan, and also Lorena, Cecilia's
student. Chris is the physicist of the group.
They won't ascend the volcano but they will visit
us in the field to collect samples at lower elevations
and those from the volcano that we will bring
back. Team B will rush back to UCN to study as
quickly as possible these fragile samples. They
will visit us three times in the field (see schedule).
For Team B, we had to organize a complete biology
lab at UCN. It means renting microscopes, shipping
biological equipment (going from slides to water
analysis kit, plankton nets and much more). Guillermo
and Cecilia have found a room where this entire
lab will be installed before the arrival of Team
B in Antofagasta, Oct. 21st. The microscopes have
actually to be shipped from Santiago (Chile) to
Antofagasta therefore we have to make sure that
all is proceeding normally. It seems so far that
it is.
Team A is the ascent team. It includes me, Edmond,
Marc, Andy, David, Brian, and Christian who is
Guillermo's student at UCN. Guillermo will be
with Team A in the field but won’t ascend.
Right now, an entire office at the SETI Institute
is filled with our boxes. Andy is fighting to
get one of the two rafts fit in one of the boxes.
Small boxes have to go into bigger boxes and the
poor Sue and Lauren, our guardian angels in charge
of the shipment at the SETI Institute are listing
every single piece of equipment. The Devil is
in the detail…We do not want to leave behind
something important. So, we check, and check,
and check…Well, you've got the picture!
We will take the minimum with us in the plane.
It takes a lot of coordination and luck in that
we have so many dedicated people working for us
at NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute,
and especially at UCN. It is critical to have
somebody you really trust in the country where
you will be investigating. Guillermo is this person.
Guillermo and I became dear friends after our
collaboration during the 1997 Nomad field experiment.
I was the Project Science Lead and he was the
field geologist for us in the Atacama. Our families
know each other very well and it is a great pleasure
to be undertaking this scientific and human adventure
together.
Before we leave, we will be doing some more testing
of some parts of the equipment that we will take
with us. That includes MARVIn, our robot that
will be tested in the field during the expedition.
Marc and I will tell more about MARVIn-- our special
"Martian" tomorrow as we are going to
proceed to some testing today in the NASA Ames
Research Center Mars Yard. I'll try to get some
pictures…
All of this is extremely exciting. Now that the
project has been going successfully through the
safety evaluation from NASA Ames, that the equipment
is almost on its way to Chile, and the microscopes
will leave Santiago soon, I am breathing a bit
easier. I can start really to think about the
science and the adventure ahead and that feels
good! More tomorrow… |
