The Acoustics of a Spacesuit

Today was my first EVA in the spacesuits. The suits are cumbersome, making simple tasks like turning the ATV key or taking soil samples pretty difficult. David and I set out on the ATVs for Factory Butte, about six miles from the hab. I took advantage of my helmet … the acoustics inside are great! I was belting out several appropriately Martian-themed David Bowie songs as we drove across the desert (cue “Life on Mars” and “Space Oddity”). Thank god those helmets are mostly soundproof.

Unfortunately, there’s not actually a trail leading to Factory Butte. About a half-hour after we left the hab, David and I were completely off the ATV route, trying to find a way around the mesas looming between us and Factory Butte, still more than 4 miles in the distance. We decided to play it safe, and turn back (even though we were carrying GPS).

I picked Factory Butte because just north of it are salt flats. This is an ideal place to search for halophiles (salt-loving organisms, typically bacteria or protists), and halophiles are of particular interest to astrobiologists.

Water is a requirement for life. If the water is briny, when it evaporates it will leave highly concentrated salts in the soil, several times the concentration of salt as in seawater, making an environment inhabitable only by halophiles. As water evaporates, it also causes calcium sulfate (gypsum) to precipitate. MDRS is surrounded by gypsum fields, meaning there are many promising places to try collecting halophiles! By studying these organisms, we may gain insight into our search for ancient life on Mars, where a dried-up body of water could have left hypersaline environments analogous to those right here in Utah.

Trying to do “real” science here is frustrating. The lab downstairs doesn’t have much in the way of fancy equipment. Even if I had the time (two weeks is hardly enough), I wouldn’t be able to do a very close analysis of any organisms I might collect. In fact, even trying to keep collected organisms will be difficult. Halophiles thrive only in specific conditions, sensitive to factors like pH. I’m equipped with little more than a couple jars of agar and some NaCl (salt).

On the other hand, this is a great challenge of my basic, pure scientific abilities … I’ll be proud of myself if I can figure anything out without the aid of the half-million-dollar microscope and army of chemicals I’m used to being equipped with.

Jeff and Derek continue to be engineering geniuses. Hopefully soon we will have a working toilet and an observatory capable of collecting actual data of use to our astronomer. Auvi is building a pretty sweet-looking bipedal robot. David has been a fantastic commander so far … really good at keeping us enthusiastic and on task. I couldn’t have gotten a better crew. Sappy, but true.

Sorry again for the really long post.