Crew 226 EVA Report 23-01-2022
EVA # 5
Author: Felipe Torres, Crew Scientist
Purpose of EVA: Recognition of the lithology of the zone.
Temperature and humidity measurements of a control volume using an insulating composite material. This material will work as a space blanket or space tent, which will protect humans as well as equipment so we’re interested in studying the insulative efficiency of this material under critical temperature conditions.
Start time: 11:00 am
End time: 1:50 pm
Narrative: Hab Ridge was a great location for our mission plan. We started walking from the Hab towards Route 1103, which took us West to the start of the rocky ridge. At this point the path got really rocky and we had to do some hiking to get past the rocks to the top of the ridge. We got to a plain area and at this point we stopped to take some Temperature and Humidity measurements for the insulative material we’re working with: first we took general measurements with the sensor inside a recipient without the material and then we took the measurements covering the recipient with our material. We recorded this data in a computer using Arduino. Finally, we walked South through Hab Ridge Road where the path was a little clearer. Here we found some invertebrate fossils, a lot of them, we were actually surprised how many small “devil’s toe nails” we found. These fossils are known as Gryphaea, or extinct bivalve mollusks. We did take a close look to these fossils but we chose not to collect any of them as it doesn’t correspond to our mission purpose.
While we kept walking south through Hab Ridge Road, we analyzed some rocks. Locally we observed some quartz-sandstones of course and medium grain size with some opaques. In one outcrop we observed the contact between a coarse-grained sandstone with a small grained sandstone that was alternated with mudstones. The latter depicted lenticular bedding which indicates a slack water environment where mud suspended in the water is deposited on top of small formations of sand once the water velocity is zero. All of the above gives us the insight that the sedimentary formation in the area was present in an environment with fluctuations in tidal currents.
By 1:15 pm we started heading back to the Hab; we hiked back down through the Hab Ridge and took some nice pictures of the landscape to finally arrive back at the Hab at 1:50 pm
This has been so far the most physically challenging EVA, as hiking with the weight of the suits, plus an extra back pack with a computer made it a little more difficult. Nevertheless, it has also been the most satisfying EVA due to the scientific data that we could extract from it and overall, it was a very nice and successful EVA.
Felipe Torres, Crew Scientist