In today's edition of the Chicago Tribune writer Howard Witt, who visited the HMP Research Station last month, has written an article on his adventure titled "Devon Island like no place on Earth". Here's an excerpt;

"A human mission to Mars might be 30 years away or more, but one day it will happen," said Pascal Lee, 43, the NASA astronomer who first visited this place a decade ago and supervises the Haughton-Mars Project, as the program is known. "The fundamental lessons we are learning here need to be learned now. On the moon and Mars, it's going to be all about fieldwork, geology, reconnaissance, resource assessment, traversing vast tracts of territory--all of this stuff we do on a daily basis here."

Editor's update - Dec. 20: After a week the Chicago Tribune archives their stories and you have to pay to read it.

Posted by Marc Boucher at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

On Thursday August 10th the last of the participants left the HMP Research Station. The research station was prepared for the coming winter. While everyone has left the research station, work is still ongoing, both back at their respective institutions for participants and at the research station. At the research station the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse is working autonomously with researchers monitoring systems remotely. Shown below is the ongoing summer plant growth.

This next image shows the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse and surrounding area.

Posted by Marc Boucher at 1:01 PM | Comments (0)

The field season is winding down, and the station is being prepared for the winter as the final research projects come to a close.

Over the past week, additional testing of the Hamilton-Sundstrand spacesuit was conducted in addition to ongoing fieldwork being carried out by participants from Morehead State University, University of Aberdeen and University of Ottawa. The Mars Institute was also very happy to accommodate a visit by CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield. In addition to visiting HMP, Chris also gave talks about his experiences in space to the communities of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord.

The station population is currently at 22, with this number expected to fall to 15 by the end of the day.

Posted by Nick WIlkinson at 2:16 PM | Comments (0)

Monday's EVA Med Evac Simulation was a success, having met all of the intended objectives. Click for more photos and a summary of the day's events.

In summary, the 2006 HMP Lunar Medical Contingency Simulation demonstrated that an injured suited crewmember could be safely extracted from difficult terrain, similar to what might be expected in a lunar EVA, and transported to a remote site for diagnostic and therapeutic care. A number of issues developed unexpectedly during the sim that challenged the crew and sim planners. However, the team was able to complete the mission, which involved real-time communications and coordination between members of the Exploration Payload Operations Center at NASA-Johnson Space Center (ExPOC), International Space University (ISU) in Strasburg, France, and the Payload Tele-Operations Center (PTOC) in Montreal, Canada.

In addition to those organizations mentioned above, coordination and implementation of the exercise on Devon Island was carried out by participants from Simon Fraser University, Hamilton-Sundstrand, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Colorado (Boulder), Rocky Mountain Rescue, the Canadian Space Agency, NASA-Johnson Space Center, NASA-Ames Research Center and Mars Institute.

Posted by Nick WIlkinson at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

Two new HMP Research Station webcams are now online and updating every 10 minutes. This brings a total of four webcams now available including the two from the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse.

MarsCam2

MarsCam3

Posted by Marc Boucher at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)