18 July 2012 Videos and Mars

Summary

Students spent the morning working on their Summit video and the afternoon with Lisa Pratt's Indiana University group. The group is testing various types of equipment to determine whether they may be able to detect methane in the field. If the equipment performs well here they hope that the equipment can be used for future rover missions to Mars.

Summit Video 2012

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Pictures

Student Blog - Charlotte Madsen, Denmark

I am Charlotte from Denmark. I go to high school in Ribe and my main subjects are mathematics, biology and chemistry. We started the day by editing our small movie shots from Summit so we later can put it all together as a long movie that tells about our Summit adventure. We were all done with our videos in the early afternoon, but before we started how it should be put together as a big movie we took out on a trip to some small lakes nearby Russel glacier to meet up with some scientists from Indiana University. They measure methane in the area to test how well their equipment measure it. They already know that there is produced methane in the area and they can therefore make the tests there. They do the test to find out whether equipment similarly to this can be send to Mars on a rover mission in the future. One of their methods is to point a laser against a mirror, send out waves towards the mirror a measure how the waves are when they come back. If there is methane, they are able to measure it in the waves. Another method is to stamp around in the mud in a lake and catch all the gasses from the mud with a funnel. This is also the funniest method, because it is so difficult to stamp around without being trapped in the mud and afterwards fall.