In just over four months the Mars Institute along with our research partners from various organizations and space agencies will once again make the trek to the HMP Research Station in the high arctic for the 12th year of research activities by the Haughton-Mars Project.

As we get closer to deploying we'll keep you up to date on what specific activities we'll be doing this year. One added bonus event this year is the total solar eclipse happening on August the 1st. The HMP Research Station is directly in the path of totality so we should have an excellent viewing and research opportunity, weather permitting of course.

The Haughton-Mars Project will be using even more social media tools this year to keep you up to date. To start, we invite you to follow us on our HMP Research Station Twitter channel. Twitter is social micro-blogging service.

Posted by Marc Boucher at 1:18 PM

We had a great field season with some of the best weather ever for our researchers. At this time we have been debriefing with all the participants the events of the past field season and making plans for an even better field deployment next year. As well next year has an added bonus of a total solar eclipse occurring on August 1st with our research station being in the direct path. This provides us with an opportunity for additional research we might not normally do from our location.

The HMP Research Station is unoccupied at this time however ongoing research is being conducted in the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse with data being collected daily and being sent back by satellite to researchers in Vancouver and Montreal.

Posted by Marc Boucher at 1:16 PM

This past field season, a team from Discovery Channel Canada visited the HMP Research Station and gathered material for several pieces to be aired on Daily Planet.

Three pieces are scheduled to run this week on Daily Planet (Canada only), featuring the EVA Walkback experiment (Sept. 11th), the NASA K-10 rovers from the Ames Research Center (Sept. 12th) and the telemedicine work being done at HMP (Sept. 13th).

Daily Planet can be seen on Discovery Channel Canada at 7pm and 11pm (Eastern). Note that due to the news-magazine style of the Daily Planet, breaking news and other events may cause changes to the original scheduling.

Also, anyone in Canada can watch these episodes online about a day following the original TV air date.

Posted by Nick WIlkinson at 12:44 PM

On August 25th, John Schutt (HMP Base Camp Manager) was featured in an article in the New York Times for his distinguished service to the ANSMET (Antarctic Search for Meteorites) program. Earlier this month John was the recipient of the Meteoritical Society's Service Award for his work guiding scientists in the Antarctic over the past 25 field seasons, since 1980. Read the full article here.

Everyone at the Haughton-Mars Project would like to congratulate John on this most prestigious honor.

Posted by Nick WIlkinson at 10:40 PM