On Monday (August 1), a group of eight researchers and their collaborators headed north into the high Arctic, around a month from the Haughton Mars Project (HMP) base on Devon Island, about 15 degrees south of the North Pole. This group includes the base’s founder and expedition leader, Dr. Pascal Lee, a group of researchers from MIT’s Haystack Observatory, other researchers and auxiliaries, and myself, the only media representative.
This will be the HMP team’s return to base since 2019 due to COVID-19 restrictions and their condition is uncertain – weather and polar bears (opens in new tab) can wreak havoc on structures and supporting equipment. Onsite generators and ATVs have gone through multiple freeze-thaw cycles, and increasingly hungry polar bears may have made their way into some of the lightly built habitats — they’ve tried before. While satellite images show no major damage, success is far from certain.
Before we can begin the chain of four to six flights over two days necessary to reach the remote outpost, we need to pack the gear we need and prepare for extreme weather. While the nearest weather station reports temperatures between 1 and 7 degrees Celsius and humidity around 90%, the weather on Devon Island – the world’s largest uninhabited island – can be very different, with strong winds often causing the temperatures to drop drop due to wind chill.
Related: NASA’s Haughton-Mars Project: Daylight Saving Time on a “Planet” Close to Home
For travel to HMP, we are limited to 50 pounds (22.6 kilograms) of checked baggage for personal items and a single carry-on bag. This isn’t a challenge on normal trips, as anything forgotten or overlooked can be picked up at a nearby Walmart or corner store. But on Devon we have to contend with everything we take with us, so cold-weather clothing is vital and anything mechanical or electronic is unlikely to be replaceable. The HMP base has spares for a few things, but we’ve been told not to rely on them.
In my case, that means camera gear and laptops are critical assets, and backups of any wear-and-tear or temperature-sensitive item are essential. Batteries hate the cold, lenses hate the harsh, wind-blown sand, and all electronic devices are prone to fail at critical times. Duplicate technology gets heavy fast, but since a critical element failure would put me in vacation mode for a month, backups are a must. I’ve been preparing for weeks and three days before departure I’m packing, packing, disposing of and repacking for the third time.
The base is operated by the Mars Institute and was founded and built in the late 1990s by Lee, a planetary geologist and co-founder of the institute. Excited about the project, Lee now jokes, “I’ve lived in California for 25 years but have never spent a summer here until COVID.” When asked if he’s excited to return to his analog Mars base, he smiles he wide. “I wouldn’t say it’s pleasant, but yes, it’s a wonderful, otherworldly place that has a lot to offer for understanding future exploration of Mars.”
The base, abbreviated HMP (you can find it under “Haughton-Mars Project Base Camp” on Google Maps), sits on the rim of the Haughton Impact Crater, a 20-kilometer-long structure formed about 23 million years ago by an asteroid or comet impact and is located at about 75 degrees latitude. It is the largest impact structure in the northern regions and, along with many other Mars-like features on the island, makes Haughton possibly the best analogue of the Red Planet on Earth.
The HMP base consists of a group of eight buildings – a couple of hard buildings and a series of vinyl covered frames that make up the rest of the camp. The Haughton Mars project is supported by NASA, the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, and a variety of other sources, and NASA makes available several of the experiments conducted there each year, expanding the research conducted there .
An advance team consisting of Lee, polar veteran and HMP base manager John Schutt, myself and a handful of others will complete the final leg of the trip to conduct an aerial survey of the base and, weather and ground conditions permitting, on the base land The runway of HMP. Assuming all is in acceptable order, the remaining participants, along with about 25 boxes of radioastronomical equipment, will follow on a second Twin Otter flight.
My next cable will be our arrival in Canada dealing with the extensive COVID safety protocols and our departure for Devon Island. Until then.
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