page_title: Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
section_title: 2002
hierarchical_section_title: Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station / Research and accomplishments / 2002
caption_attribution_description: English: Nell Beedle, Emily MacDonald and Frank Eckardt of Crew 7 use a reflectance spectrometer during EVA on Devon Island on July 19, 2002.
context_page_description: The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station is the first of two simulated Mars habitats established and maintained by the Mars Society.
context_section_description: The crew deployed a weather station on Haynes Ridge which had been donated to the Mars Society by Met One Instruments. The weather station provided data on wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, humidity and temperature.
  A Terra/MISR reflectance spectrometer provided by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was used to take ground truth reflectance spectra of landforms on Devon Island, to compare with measurements taken by a similar device (MISR) on board the earth orbiting Terra satellite. These spectra were collected by the crew during multiple EVAs, and were the farthest-north ground-truth measurements ever taken for the MISR instrument. This was an important demonstration of combined human/robot exploration operations that will need to be done on Mars.
  Systematic sampling and characterization of extremophile bacteria from the local environment was conducted, utilizing equipment provided from several sources including Dartmouth College, an epifluorescent microscope sponsored by the Zeiss Company and a molecular laboratory lent by MJ Research.
  "In situ" samples were collected by the crew during EVA. These are rock samples that are not broken away from the large rock formations of their origin and are therefore free from modern biological or weathering action. The samples were collected to assist in testing a life-detection experiment called MASSE that was being developed by the Geophysical Department of the Carnegie Institute.
  Records were collected of rock-size distribution (in which the fraction of ground covered at each location by sand, granules, pebbles, cobbles, small boulders, and large boulders is estimated) in order to provide a quantitative estimate of the roughness of the ground to compare with coloration on Landsat satellite images.
  Additionally, the crew hosted for a short period two journalists from Russian National Television (NTV) who collected footage of the station and its crew during the simulation.
caption: Nell Beedle, Emily MacDonald and Frank Eckardt of Crew 7 use a reflectance spectrometer during EVA on July 19, 2002.
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