My Trip to Mars - MDRS

[kdesigns]

I just returned from my latest trip to Mars - Well, The Mars Society's Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Hanksville, Utah, to be exact. Our crew of Artemis Westenberg, Josh Nelson, Gary Fisher, myself, and James Harris (who joined Artemis after Josh, Gary and I had left) had our work cut out for us, as the "Hab" needed some TLC.

The first day Josh and I spent removing the carpet - Think "sand sponge". The floor was later painted with 2 coats of a medium blue floor enamel with anti-slip additive - Easy to clean, cheap to repair...

The window in the Commander's stateroom needed to be replaced. I got out the Hammer and saw -

And the Hab needed a paint job. Artemis painted the entire lower half, and tried to paint the upper half, but, alas, she's just a little, em, not tall enough...

I, however, am able to reach great heights. Artemis and I made a good team (Please don't forward these photos to OSHA)...

Josh donned "the suit" and posed for some photos with MDRS' latest equipment acquisition - a 6 passenger "Pressurized Rover" - A 2000 Ford Expedition. A real nice addition, and it should proved to be a good asset to the teams visiting the Hab this year and for years to come...

Josh also posed for some photos that may turn into any number of PR/advertising opportunities...

I woke up early on Tuesday morning (3:30 am) and went out to the Hab, I wanted to capture some starry night photos. I think these turned out pretty well.

The constellation Orion was very visible...

As was the Big Dipper. The 3 stars at the top right of center in this photo are the tail of the Dipper. I couldn't far enough away to get the entire Dipper and the Hab in the photo...

And here are 2 other night photos. I had just enough Moonlight to make the photos jump.

For the "photo techies", most of the night shots were taken with an ISO of 2000, F3.5, 25-30 second exposures. The Nikon D300 is amazing!

I don't know how Gary managed to dodge my camera, but he was busy in the Green Hab, getting the Grey Water recycling system up and running. The crews this year "should" have running water and a flushable toilet - An improvement over last year's mechanicals.

Josh also did an outstanding job of configuring all of the electronics - Web Cams, satellite internet, radio telescope, and some other "techie" stuff that was over my head.

I'm looking forward to hearing from all of the 2009-10 crews and the science that they'll all be able to do at MDRS. Many thanks to The Mars Society for allowing me to again visit MDRS and help out.

And a special "thank you" to Mom-in-law Sara for sponsoring me - I couldn't have done it without you!

p.s. - If any of this gets you excited about "Humans on Mars" - do something! Join The Mars Society at www.MarsSociety.org.

On to Mars!

 

[Hawgman]

Those are some damn cool pictures Keith!

Uh..... last picture. Is that building actually as crooked as it looks?
You need to get ya a motorized tripod so you can track with the movement of the earth and your stars won't be blurry.

 

[kdesigns]

Hawggy,
No, the building's straight, but at 4 am, hungover, in the dark, with a 6" mini tripod set on a crate, I was having problems seeing things level! As I had to pack for both SEMA and 6 days in the desert, I was packing as light as I could.

I thought it was kinda cool, that at a 30 second exposure, you actually get movement in the stars!

Thamks for the props...

 

[don_w]

Those night pics are awesome!

But I thought Mars was red???????????

 

[Hawgman]

I thought it was kinda cool, that at a 30 second exposure, you actually get movement in the stars!

It's actually pretty amazing (or at least to me) that you can focus on an object in the night sky with a camera, telescope, etc. and tell the earth is moving... and pretty damn quickly I might add!

 

[Herknav]

Too many people don't support our spaceflight efforts...

 

[Croft]

WOW. I never see that many damn stars where I live. That's beautiful!

 

[ZmanM3]

Cool stuff, and awesome pictures.

 

[andyman]

Those night pics are awesome!

But I thought Mars was red???????????

Nope, only in total recall

 

[kdesigns]

Actually, Mars is a very "rust" color, given that most of it's soil has some component of iron in it. And since the CO2 sky reflects the colors of the soil, most of the sky has a redish/orangish hue. We think - Since we haven't received any "true color" photos from the planet yet (all of the NASA photos have been "color approximated")

Now, the Utah desert is another matter. While the soil does resemble Mars (a lot!), the sky is all ours...

 

[2k05gt]

Those night pics are awesome!

But I thought Mars was red???????????

I Fixed it..

 

[2k05gt]

WOW. I never see that many damn stars where I live. That's beautiful!

Light Pollution sucks.
If you go out to the Moutains in West Virginia you will see stars like that, Even the Milky way. you can even see small pebble size meteorites entering the atmosphere creating shooting stars.

 

[bigray327]

Nice, Keith. I work at NASA/Johnson Space Center and am currently helping design the Constellation spacecraft, which will be taking humans to the Moon in 2020 and Mars in 2030 or so. If you're ever down here and are into that kind of thing, let me know, I'll show ya some stuff.

The future...


The successful test launch of Ares-1 last month...

 

[ZmanM3]

Thats pretty cool stuff. I'm kind of cerous why you guys at NASA are not developing a reusable replacement for the shuttle.

 

[FalconGTHO]

Wow, cool ass shit, Keith. I LOVE space shit.