Journalist Report – October 24th

Journalist Report

MDRS Crew 301

Michael Ho, 10.24.24

Day 4: We woke up and find ourselves back on MDRS Utah, Earth!

That awesome Martian landscape through the visor of the helmet while that constant swishing of oxygen blowing past our ears will now hang proudly suspended in time within all our memories.

Nevertheless the crew is now back on Earth, and we still have much to learn and samples to collect.

0742 hrs: Sunrise. Eager to catch the only Sun we share with Mars as seen from Earth. Right on time, it appeared, bathing the landscape below with its beautiful golden glow.

0900 hrs: Zoom with Mission Specialist Dr. Shannon Rupert (who is still on Mars). We had a very brief history of NASA’s search for water and life on Mars through the various rovers such as Pathfinder and Sojourner. We had a quick lesson with samples of petrified wood, Gryphaea, coprolite, man-made mud pottery, dinosaur bone marrow. The importance of using desert varnish as a model to detect life on Mars made a lot of sense, knowing that these rocks may potentially contain microbial mats of cyanobacteria and fungi (as on Earth), and desert varnish had been detected by Spirit on Mars.

1000 hrs: Off we went, looking for desert varnish at…

1100 hrs: We arrived at Gryphaea Hill at North Ridge and were mind blown by the sight of the exoskeletons of gryphaea dotting every single inch of the entire area. An upheaval of the landform here must have then left all marine life here high and dry – leaving only a mass grave of these lifeforms from some 155 million years ago.

1300 hrs: Burger Shak! Nothing fills the spirit more than a great Hanksburger Combo at Burger Shak after a stint on Mars.

1400 hrs: Rockin Riddle Rock Shop – this shop totally rocks! We went in and felt like Harry Potter when he first entered Diagon Alley – there were just so many rocks to check out! Cathy the owner is such a gem with many interesting stories to tell!

1515 hrs: Some of the crew members also tried out Riley’s two new designs of helmets for EVA.

Riley wearing the helmet she designed as part of SWB Utah.

Alex from Crew 301 wearing the helmet Riley designed.

1600 hrs: We went off to Barrainca Butte to hunt for galaxy rocks and to stake out the area near Robert’s Garden for the lichen that fluoresces under UV. We found the patch, and will go out again tonight with UV flashlights to have a look at it.

1730 hrs: Back to Hab!