EVA Narrative – November 28th

EVA NARRATIVE 28/22/16

Jon Clarke

Today Yusuke and I carried a multi-focus EVA.  We started out setting up some instrumentation in Yusuke’s dome and attaching padding to the roll bars of the electric rover.  We then set out to the north along Cow Dug Rd(yes there were cows today as well) on the quad bikes to collect more data of the palaeochannels that I visited with Annalea last week.

Yusuke among the boulders

The weather was blustery, a cold north wind with light snow showers all round, but not on us.  We were cool, but it was warm enough while we were walking round.  Lugging 15 kg simulated space suits round the landscape is a very warming activity!

Photographing honeycomb weathering

There was lots of data to collect –orange lichens, honeycomb weathering, crossing inverted palaeochannels, and cross bedded conglomerates in the palaeochannels.  Yesuke was trialling a new technique, 3D photography from which he was able to construct anaglyphs (blue-green stereo-pairs).  We should be able to post these in the next couple of days.  When we finished out field work we headed back to the station and did some more work on the dome and collected data on the dimensions of the quad bikes.

Yusuke photographing bright orange lichen

Now the work really starts, as it does after all EVAs – making sense of the data.  There are notes to read and complete, photos to edit and sort, correlations and comparisons to be made. Out of these data and analyses come the ideas that shape our understanding of the area and drive the goals of future EVAs.