ingeloes

ANSMET preparation - 1, what is ANSMET?

2010-10-12T20:31:00.000-04:00

From Nov 27, 2010 till Jan 28(ish), 2011 I will participate in the ANSMET campaign.

ANSMET stands for the ANtarctic Search for METeorites and is held every year since 1976 (coincidence?) on.... Antarctica. This year the expedition consists of 2 teams, a reconnaissance team of 4, who go explore new possible collection sites, and a meteorite hunting (...) team of 8, who strip a site of its meteorites. I will be joining the hunting team, so I'm glad I got the rifle training on Svalbard.

In short the expedition is as follows (dates are approximates):

* Nov 27 - leaving DC

* Nov 29 - arrive in Christchurch, NZ (in a C-130)

* Nov 30 - collect cold weather gear

* Dec 1 - fly out to McMurdo, the US Antarctic Station, weather permitting

* Dec 2-9 - survival school / field training: skidoo/snowmobile, equipment testing, survival and rescue training

* Dec 10 - fly to deployment site (see below) (2.5 hours land inward, on a ski-plane :))

* Jan 21-22 - return to McMurdo

* Jan 28ish - return to Christchurch

We (and no, I've never met the other we's before) will be camping at the Davis-Ward Nunataks in the Dominion Range, about 400 km North (...) of the South Pole. (picture from ANSMET-site)

My preparation for all this started in July with a wide range of medical and dental tests. Obviously, medivacing someone out of the middle of Antarctica (nowhere...) is crazy expensive, so we had to be tested for the weirdest things. The nice thing of an expedition like this is you have to go through it, so at least I know again that I'm completely healthy and deaf nor blind. Very reassuring.

Also, I got the first flu-shot in my life, and considering how my arm and I felt after that, probably the last one for a while as well. Now it's just a matter of doing nothing stupid until I leave).

In the coming weeks I'll keep an update of my preparations and in the first week in McMurdo I may be able to post some first images. We will keep a communal blog on the ice, the site of which will be posted here, but we will not have individual internet access, so keep an eye out for the ANSMET blog.

AMASE - day 15 - Farewell Ny-Ålesund

2010-08-26T02:03:00.000-04:00

...

Svalbard

Longyearbyen

AMASE - Day 14 - Farewell "party"

2010-08-25T02:56:00.000-04:00

Last night, so AMASE hosted a party for AMASERs and locals in an old house at the shore. It was a bit a broken-up event, since half of the people were still running around either packing their own stuff or helping others, but in between the running around the light led to some nice pictures.

Party house

Eckhard and Jean-Luc

Antonio

Jen

Keyong

Dave

Long shadows

Longer shadows

The fjord

AMASE - Day 14 - One more hike

2010-08-25T02:29:00.000-04:00

Since all our stuff was packed and the weather was great, Jen, Kjell-Ove and I decided to go for one more hike in the direction of the blue glacier I've been staring at for the past two weeks. We made a to about a third of the way there, but still close enough to hear the rumble of parts breaking off.

AMASE - Day 13 - Last lab day

2010-08-24T01:11:00.000-04:00

I just ran the last samples and unfortunately had to decleare the second oven dead as well. But, it only gave up in the last 100 °C of the heating profile, so all in all the oven worked perfectly fine for the duration of the full AMASE and I got all the results I needed. Happy me and a million thanks to Marvin, Vince, Ray and Eric, who put this oven together December 2009 and made it run all the way through the ILSO-ISRU (Hawaii) campaing and AMASE! Can't say too much about the results, yet, since they will be published at some point.

Time to clean and p up and VAPoR for the way back to Goddard.

Some more random pics.

Geologist, doing his geologist thing:

Polar bear warning...

Local art work

Polar fox (thanks, Carole for the picture)

AMASE - Day 12 - Swimming with icebergs

2010-08-23T00:49:00.000-04:00

After two days running samples in the lab, with a still very happily running oven and everything else still working as well, some of us got the heebie-beebies and needed to get out again. Since we didn't have too much time, we decided to go for the quick ultracold polar experience... a swim in the fjord.

Some of us were Tor the Rock Crusher, Mads the pilot and myself. Kjell-Ove joined us for safety and the MOMA team (Carole and Eckhard) to check if we were not just bluffing. Well. we weren't so here's the proof. I went first and just wend under and ran back, then Mads decided to actually climed the iceberg and Tor to kiss the next one.

FYI, water temperature ~0.5-1 °C (32-33 °F)

AMASE - Day 10 - Troll Springs

2010-08-20T21:00:00.065-04:00

After running one sample in the morning, I totally lucked out and got a change to fill up and empty seat in the helicopter to Troll Springs, AND the helicopter actually left as well! (Previous attempts to go into the field by several other people were either canceled or results in a 3-hour airtour of Svalbard, because it was too foggy to depart or land).

Troll Springs is a thermal spring travertine site on "the other side" of one of the glaciers in our scenic view. The main reason why I am very interested in the site is that Verena (see previous post) is doing her PhD on microbes living there and I really wanted to see what she is working on.

Besides poking my nose in her microbes I also got a chance to work with the PanCam (panoramic camera) team, making myself quite useful (at least that's what I think) by measuring reference distances from rocks and other geological features to the cameras and holding red-green-blue filters in front of the camera.

We spent about 6 hours at the Springs and even had a 5-minute "uh-oh are we going to be fogged in and staying overnight, or will we get back", but we did get back (somewhat fortunate, but camping out there wouldn't be too bad either).

Below the pictorial impression of this (fill in comparable word other than awesome) day.

AMASE - Day 9 - Boat trip to the blue glacier

2010-08-20T00:30:00.001-04:00

After a day well-spent in the lab Liane had to go out sampling again, this time glacier ice and mud, so we took a boat onto the fjord, towards the blue ice.

Amy

Liane

Guillermo

Kjell-Ove

and myself

Liane had to sample and I made myself useful by serving as her counter balance (all pictures below by Kjell-Ove).

Then it was Guillermo's and my turn. As newbies we had to sample clear glacier ice for the gin-tonic for later that night.

And of course nice scenery

1.30 in the morning, isn't it gorgeous....

AMASE - Day 8 - Men in Black

2010-08-19T02:30:00.001-04:00

One of the AMASE traditions is the Men in Black picture. The pictures speak for themselves, Kjell-Ove, our incredible photographer took them, so credits to him.

The whole crew

The Goddard girls

The organic people

AMASE - Day 7 - Glacier Hike

2010-08-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

After a day of running samples in the lab, we got another change to get out. This time we hiked to the glacier to sample snow algae in the red circle. The day before our hike a polar bear had been seen in the area, so we were with a small group of 9 people and 2 guns. Four people (including myself) were constantly looking around for any sign of polar bear activity, the other five were staring at the ground looking at rocks, lichens, moss and algae, and most likely would not even have noticed a polar right in front of their noses.

After about an hour and a half we reached the glacier:

The sampling site:

Sampling

Group shot (guess who's me....)

Liane

Steve

Marilyn

Amy

Jen

Dave

Verena

And Tor the Rock Crusher

AMASE - Day 5 and 6 - the real deal

2010-08-16T15:30:00.000-04:00

After a few days of orientation, playing around, and getting used to the cold and group and everything else, it was time to get some samples analyzed!

We started off with two unknown calibration samples and then it's time for the real real samples. Everybody will run the same samples so we will get the most extensive data set possible. It looks like it will be a really fruitful expedition for me, even in the first two days I've already learned so much! I even managed to look at a rock and make some useful comments.

Keyong

Laureline

Below some more outdoorsy pictures, the scenery here is so distracting, I can't help staring out of the window every other minute... We have a dedicated filmer (Dave) and photographer (Kjell-Ove) here who make me feel a little amateurish.. So perhaps I'll borrow one of their shots with permission.

Dave shooting reindeer

The iceberg from a few days ago

"wildlife!"

AMASE - Day 4 - orientation hike

2010-08-15T03:47:00.000-04:00

Today we went for a 5 hour hike, partly for us to get to see the surroundings, partly for the expedition leads to get an idea our hiking capabilities.

The pictures will tell the rest of the story.

The usual shot of blue ice.

Amy:

On the airport:

Marilyn teaching:

About this:

Ivar, our hike lead and safety lead, Marily, Amy and Tor:

Local flora:

Local wildlife:

(Dave and Dick, who was also in Hawaii, see below)

(reindeer)

(me)

View of the fjord

View from airport from same spot as above, 4.5 hours later:

The reason why we can't use cell phone (so nice and quiet):

My usual shot of blue ice....

and the most pretty of all, Ny-Ålesund at 2.30 in the morning:

AMASE - Day 3 - safety training

2010-08-13T16:37:00.000-04:00

Today the focus was on safety, so we started the day with a 3-hour briefing about polar bears, rifles, what to bring in the field, how to behave in the field, how to dress in the field, and how to not be stupid in the field. It was kind of a long sit, but better safe than sorry and I must say the part about the polar bears helped me feeling less uncomfortable about them. In about 99% of the encounters you can scare them away without any trouble.

If not... shoot to kill.

Well, that's quite a statement for someone who's never even been close to a gun shot, so off to the shooting range.

First, we practiced half-loading a gun: put the bullets in the magazine, close the bolt - without loading the chamber, and pull the trigger. This is the safest way to carry a rifle and be able to quickly operate it (you just pull the bolt and load the bullet into the chamber). However, we had to try this in room full of people, which is a good way of figuring out who can handle guns safely, but scared the hell out of me (pardon my language).

Then we went off to the shooting range for the real deal.. That was a totally different experience. We all had to get certified rifle shooters by firing at a target, first lying on your stomach, then kneeling, and lastly standing upright. That was an experience... I did much better than I anticipated, did not get scared at all, and actually found it quite fun. The other good point - I completely lost my last nerves about running into polar bears. So time to get into the field.

Jen shooting

Me loading

Me shooting

Besides all the training we actually did some preliminary science. We are divided in 4 different disciplinary groups

* Geology

* Mineralogy / Geochemistry

* Organic geochemistry

* Biology / Planetary protection.

Because Amy's SAM-like pyrolysis mass spec and VAPoR will do similar measurements we decided to split up, and since Amy is a mineralogist, I joined the organic geochemistry group. The goals of these groups is to reach a common standpoint on where to go sciencewise and what samples we need to reach our scientific goals. As group lead, I have to defend our choices against the other groups and come to a mutual agreement about with strategy to follow. Not yet though, science starts tomorrow.

Of course some more scenic pictures, because at 19.15 the sun decided to come out!

Tourist cruise in the harbour

The Chinese Arctic research station

My building

The old train and the pole to which Roald Amundsen connected his blimp (zeppelin)

Town, left side

Town, right side. I'm in the yellow building in the back

View of the fjord, with some interesting geological feature (the pyramid, no clue why it is shaped like that)

And of course the daily picture of the blue ice across the fjord

The sun at 21.00

AMASE - Day 2 - some "late-night" Ny-Ålesund scenery

2010-08-13T02:30:00.000-04:00

23.00 / 11 PM

(the last one needs a bit better photoshopping, this was my camera's attempt to stitch a panorama, but just to get a feel)

AMASE - Day 2 - setup

2010-08-12T15:46:00.000-04:00

Hello world :)

Luckily, I brought my airplane mask and had a very good, though bit short night of sleep.

Today started with a 9AM briefing about the plans for the next two weeks, shortly summarized as - there are several samples sites and we will go there when safety allows it (read - no polar bears, no fog that prevent helicopter landing - no bad weather in general). So hopefully weather and polar bears will cooperate!

Then we got a tour of the different labs and it was time to setup our own experiments. VAPoR hasn't really changed much since Hawaii, so the setup was relatively straightforward.

Our lab (Vaskerilab or Laundrylab... interesting)

Good.. where to start:

Of course one of the oven did again not survive the trip... And of course the surviving one is the same one used in Hawaii, so perhaps we just should send that one off to a random planet and not be too worried about mass and power requirements. Hopefully it keeps working for the next two weeks.

Some interesting observations after 1 day:

* Our (the Goddard crew) definition of portable seems to be slightly different than that of the other groups... In their advantage. But then again, we started building VAPoR about a year ago.

Here the German-French MOMA team - I want small orange VAPoR boxes too!!

* I took my shoes off and put them back on today at least 15 times... At least I brought croccs (see above) for the lab (thanks Verena!). Some people solved the cold-feet issue a little differently.

Like Danish Tor the Rock Crusher

* the recycling here should be an example for the rest of the world - 18 different recycle bins! (including, food, hard plastic, soft plastic, paper, cardboard)

* hours here are a little unconventional.

Breakfast 7.30-8.30

Lunch 12.20-13.00

Dinner 16.40-17.15

So now, at 21.45 I'm starving again...

Another view of the blue ice, this time through a telescope...

AMASE - Day 1 - arrival

2010-08-12T02:32:00.000-04:00

VAPoR is on it's way again to discover more of the world. This time the trip led us to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway, were we participate in AMASE. AMASE is the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition. To quote from the website, this is the reason for us to go there: "With a unique combination of volcanoes, hot springs and permafrost, the BVC on the Arctic islands of Svalbard is the only place on Earth with carbonate deposits identical to carbonates in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to study the interaction between water, rocks and primitive life forms in a Mars-like environment and is an ideal testing ground for instruments under development for future "Search for Life" missions to Mars (such as Mars Science Laboratory and ExoMars)."

VAPoR was originally designed for deployment on the moon, however, we are capable to detected all kinds of astrobiologically relevant stuff and Mars would be a good place to go as well.

This is the view from Lonyearbyen Airport. I arrived around 2PM and had to wait a few hours for the others to show up and the flight to Ny-Ålesund.

This is the town of Longyearbyen

And it's worldfamous Svalbard museum that actually won the Council of Europe
Museum Prize 2008.

It is really worth a visit, even though our visit got cut short, because we had to head back to the airport for the last lag of the day - to Ny-Ålesund.

In this plane.....

One seat left of the aisle, one seat right... Really my thing!

I did have the nerve to look out of the window to see this

and this

While Carnegie-Gareth was kind enough to offer up his hand to my death grip

But the result was absolutely worth it.

The town of Ny-Ålesund

Where I stay in the yellow building in the right upper corner.

Approach for landing

And for some first impressions, the (retired) Ny-Ålesund train

And the 11.15 PM (23.15) view on the blue ice glacier across the fjord, which is worth staring at 24 hours a day.

No polar bears yet.....

The Snowy Adventures of Gonzo the Great Miata

2010-02-14T22:45:00.008-05:00

Monday, February 8, 2010, after snow storm 1.

Not too bad, part is still visible.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010, before the first cleaning attempt.

Half of the top excavated.

Thickness of the snow layer

Busy excavating.

Done for now

Wednesday, February 10, 2010, after snow storm 2

Thursday, February 11, 2010, depth of the new snow layer

Excavation part 2

Result of part 2

The more artistic part of the day: Snofina

Snow shuttle

Saturday, February 13, 2010, midnight: city ploughs cleaning the street

Sunday, February 14, 2010, done! (after excavation part 3 and 4)

VAPoR field testing - Done

2010-02-07T23:00:00.003-05:00

Naniloa has nice rooms, but after being on the mountain for a week we got so spoiled with the quietness that the tiled floors in the corridors were a horror. What a noise.

View from Mauna Kea from Naniloa.

View of Mauna Kea from Hilo, with the beautiful telescopes on top.

We decided to go to the farmers' market in "down town" Hilo and get some fruit and rice to eat for breakfast, and we had breakfast in the park, while watching the surfers. It was nice and we were both glad not to eat restaurant food, but something fresh (especially me of course).

After watching the surfers for a bit we realized that we still had 1.5 hours left to do some more exploring and headed out to the Keana Cove. This was more a less a hole in the ground that stretched out in two directions, but without any lighting or anything. We alked around a bit and decided that we'd done enough exploring already and that hiking around in an unlit cave would probably not be a very good idea.

Next stop were the Rainbow Falls. Nice falls but not as impressive as expected. But at least we still got to see something of the island before heading out.

Getting home was more of a challenge than getting here, especially for Danny. He flew with United, who had canceled the Chicago-Dulles leg of the trip, but still let him fly out to Chicago. There he decided to fly to Newark and rent a car to get back home int ime for the superbowl. Delta had decided to put me on a completely different route altogether, so instead of leaving directly on Sunday, I got to stay in Honolulu with David. Lucky me, since I had decided earlier that I didn't have enough days to stay over and now I still got to see him for a whole day!

A evening hike on the beach, a very good Thai dinner, and a morning hike to the ridge of one the volcanoes.

VAPoR field testing - Day 8

2010-02-06T23:00:00.008-05:00

Pack-up day today, so the last hike down to the dust bowl. Finally, I saw one of the native protected nene-birds!

The weather was great, crisp and only a slight breeze, ideal packing conditions. We started off right away and with a 15 minute interruption for the morning meeting we were done around 9 AM. That went a lot quicker than anticipated.

After saying goodbye to everybody we worked with and thanking the PISCES, Norcat, and NASA folks for their great support, Jim drove VAPoR and us back up to the visitor where the Mauna Kea Support Services van was waiting for us already. MKSS did a great job in receiving our boxes and driving them up the mountain when we arrived and now they're taking care of getting it back down to Hilo for the shippers to pick up. That was of great help!

Around 12.30 we we're done with loading the van, showering (even 4 hours on the field site is enough to fill everything with dust again), and packing our own luggage, which was about 3 hours earlier than anticipated. Time to explore the island.

This time we went right on Saddle Road and took the through-route to Kona. Very pretty, but definitely not the main road, but a good way to quit a bit of the interior of the island. In Kona we had a great fish (ono, or in Jack's words: "Oh no") and chips lunch (didn't know that fish and chips actually could be that good) at the patio of Quinn's. I took the opportunity to buy Kona coffee beans directly from a grower who happened to be in the bar. In any other country I probably would have thought it it be a bit sketchy, but it still seems to be a good deal.

We drove back taking the "regular" road (you can't really call it a high or freeway), along the coast. It's an interesting route from Kona back to Hilo, the Kona side is really dry and volcanic and at some point you cross the boundary between leeward and windward site and it turns from meadows and dry patching into rain forest.

The second part of the drive led us over about 20 small streams and waterfalls. Very pretty.

Back in the Naniloa hotel we met up with Kris and a few others to go for dinner and we ended the night on the patio of the hotel, discussing the field testing over a bottle of scotch. Good ending of a successful week of field testing! We even made it into the Hawaiian Tribune-Herald with the field campaign.

VAPoR field testing - Day 7

2010-02-04T21:30:00.004-05:00

Today is our last day of testing VAPoR and analyzing samples, so we made ourselves quite a vigorous program. Which of course started off with the daily hike to the field site and the daily morning picture of the clouds below us.

Everything was still up and running when we got to the site and the PISCES people had already filled up our generator, so we could get started right away. On today's list: (1) a 4-meter deep sample from he same bore hole as the two samples analyzes yesterday, (2) a sample of the sintered surface material, (3) a control of the unsintered surface material next to it, and (4) a high temperature (1200 °C) test of the oven without sample that functions both as blank and as oven test.

The sintered sample came in chunks too big for our sample holder, so Danny ground it up a little (and this way justified the shipping of at least one of the tow pestles and mortars we brought along).

We are collecting a bunch of data: of course the mass spectra of the evolved gases (that's what the whole instrument is about: Volatile Analysis by Pyrolysis of Regolith),

and the temperature data of the ramping profile.

But also every 100 °C the voltage and current drawn by the oven and the internal pressure in the system.

We got a few nice results, (e.g. sintering of soil up to 900 °C does indeed remove all the volatiles - proving obvious hypotheses can be very satisfying), and more analysis is (as usual) underway (I'm spending too much time to keep you guys up to date).

The plants in the portapotty after 3 days, they still smell great though!

Also today was media day, so we had at least 30% more people running around on site taking pictures and interviewing people (not us though). Quite funny to watch them watching us.

After a successful day we shot down the system and cleaned and temporarily packed most of it. Tomorrow we're packing up and leaving the site again. Back to real life.

The daily evening hike back with Jorge, Jack and Glenn, resulted in some more cloud pics and two very pretty dead trees. Now some more data analysis and then off to bed.

Jorge and Jack taking a picture of Glenn in front of Mauna Kea.

VAPoR field testing - Day 6

2010-02-03T21:47:00.000-05:00

It was Danny's turn yesterday night to check on the equipment, so I finally got my 8 hours of sleep again. Did not notice anything shaking around me, so either I slept really well, or the volcano was quiet again. Jorge and I took the high route into the side, so instead of Mauna Loa I "woke up" with Kohala this morning.

Goodmorning Kohala

The setup was nice and warm and happily pumping so time to test out the RGA and get back to work. The new control unit worked right away, which was a great relief so time to get data.

It works!

First sample of the day.

The first sample we ran was a depth sample from the same site we analyzed a surface sample from on the first day. After that we analyzed the gas we collected yesterday. This gave clear nice results right away (very surprisingly SO2 and H2S - the rotten egg smell, at least our noses didn't lie).

Analyzing Sulphur Bank sample

After this we ran two more samples from the site were Danny sampled on the second day. On surface and one 2-m deep sample. Data are being analyzed right now, hopefully we see some nice differences.

An average heating run takes about 40 minutes (20 °C/min to 800 °C). The cool down and sample exchange time another 1.5 hour. So per day we can run 3-4 samples. During the heating we're constantly monitoring oven temperature, voltage and current, as well as the pressure in the system. When the new sample is inserted we have to pump the system down, which gives us some time to have lunch, look around at other tests, or dust off our equipment. I'm not sure how long we're going to maintain that last habit though, since it really doesn't make a difference. It's so windy and dusty that we have dust devils even in the tent (I should have brought my other experiment along).

The sample prep table after 6 days...

Dust (about half an hour after we wiped it clean for sample prep)

Hiked back "home" with Lutz over the high road again.

Around 8 PM Honeybees Kris and Jack and I went back to the site to refill my generator. After we were done we turned off the carlights and had the most beautiful view of the night sky and the Milky Way I've ever had. Everything was dark except for the stars. Very very very beautiful.

Now finishing up the data analysis and then off to bed.

VAPoR field testing - Day 5

2010-02-02T20:15:00.009-05:00

Even though we decided not to go the field site today, the alarm went off at 5.45. Still dreaming very vividly, wondering if it's the altitude or field excitement. Apparently there was some shaking going on last night, but I think I missed that.

Our initial plan was to pack up quickly on Friday and go to Volcano Nat'l Park, but since we didn't have instrument today and had to pick up our spares in Hilo, we decided to drive down early this morning.

Danny started the day with a very exciting helicopter ride over the volcanoes and even spotted a humpback whale, while I was hanging out in the sun in downtown Hilo, trying not to think about Fedex pushing our luck by shipping both the spare instrument and the new transistors in the same plane.

Wailuku River, Hilo

Hawaiian boats

The next stop was Volcano National Park in Volcano where we wanted to collect samples of the gas venting out of the volcano.

Not really what we planned to do...

After asking official National Park Service permission to get a gas sample (we're in the US after all and you never know whether collecting a gas sample in a bottle is different from collecting one using your lungs) we went to the steam vents at Sulphur Banks.

Gorillas in the mist?

There I very bravely walked into the vent to collected a sample in the gas bottle we prepared yesterday.

Duty was done now, time to get some impression of the scenery. We were on the rim of the Kilaunea caldera, but unfortunately the circumventing road was closed for the largest part due to volcanic activity.

A short walk led us through the Nahuku/Thurston lava tube, which was impressive to see, but a little overloaded with too pasty tourists (I guess we've been on the mountain for too long already).

We finished our trip on the Pu'u Huluhulu 1969 flood planes.

Back in Hilo we found a really cute place where we got a very good lunch (enough to make sure that I only needed a salad for dinner) and when we were nearly done, my phone rang with the relieving message: "Hello, this is Fedex, your shipment has arrived".

Luck was with us today, and a million thanks to John Westberg, Dan Harpold, Chris Johnson, and Paul Mahaffy for shipping this new instrument out (and thanks to the experiment from which we're stealing the RGA)! Time to drive back up to Hale Pohaku and back to the field at 21.30 to turn the system back so we can start running first thing in the morning.

VAPoR field testing - Day 4

2010-02-01T21:45:00.008-05:00

Waking up is getting tougher (maybe I should go to bed before midnight if my alarm goes off at 5.45), especially with a pair of knees that won't work. So for the first time this week I drove to the site. First thing on site was a visit to Dr. Lou, who confirmed my knees were just sore and gave me a bunch of ibuprofens and told me everything would be fine.

Next thing was the instrument. Everything had survived the night and was nice and warm and we had the best pressure ever seen in this setup.

At least the baking was good for something. Before leaving for the field site I had spoken to the company, who send me a troubleshooting guide (why are those things not standard in the manual?). As soon as we had verified everything else was fine, we worked our way through the troubleshooting. After about 30 seconds we had identified the problem - 3 fried transistors.

Back at work, Chris (Johnson) our irreplaceable VAPoR hero had already confirmed that a new unit would be shipped out to get here by tomorrow 17.00. But to be on the safe side we decided to order replacement transistors for overnight shipping as well.

Then we shut off VAPoR and covered it for a two-day hibernate.

This gives me a good opportunity to emphasize that the reason that VAPoR is not working has nothing to do with the actual part were testing, the oven, but with some commercial mass spectrometer. Many thanks to our VAPoR oven development team: Eric Cardiff, Vince Holmes, Marvin Noreiga, Ray Bendt, Greg Hidrobo, and Chris Johnson.

The rest of the morning we spent poking our noses in other peoples instruments.

Lutz & mole

Jack & Dick & inXitu

After lunch Lutz, Danny and I decided to hike up to the crater rim (about 100 m above our level) and found a quite spectacular crater on the other side.

Lutz did some soil strength measures and I decided to collect a sample of the red soil/rocks on top of the ridge, just in case our mass spec starts working again.

We also found some other nice "volcanic rocks" and a "bomb".

Bomb (Confirmed by Douwe)

When we return John Hamilton, the guy who runs PISCES, had, brought up at least half the harvest of his orchard: bananas, oranges, clementines, avocados, sugar cane, guavas, fresh figs, and flowers. Vases are not very common around our field site, so this is where the flowers ended up (followed by the effect on some of the participants).

Danny and I spent another hour or so analyzing the data we had collected, which need a lot of discussion and are very informative.

Around 16.00 we called it a day and I made Danny take another trail home, pretty much climbing the steepest hill nearly all the way up. Knees are much better and only still protesting when I try to sit down or stand up. Now off to bed at a more reasonable time. Tomorrow down to Hilo to get a gas sample from the Volcano Nat'l Park and pick up our parts from FedEx.

VAPoR field testing - Day 3

2010-01-31T23:50:00.009-05:00

Day 3 started nicely with a pretty moon and a the regular hike up to the test site.

We're staying in the Hale Pohaku observatory lodges. Rooms are nice, food less... Shouldn't complain, but will: why can our field chef haul fresh everything to a dusty site and tastes/looks the canteen food here likes it's grown in the can it came from.. Well, shouldn't be too picky I guess.

Hale Pohaku Lodge, 7:10 AM

After an apparently coldish night we found a nice frost layer on the ground.

But also our setup at -5 °C. VAPoR is living a tent for the time being and had to shut down overnight, due to lack of generator power. Quickly started warming up and pumping to get the water out and the system back up. After about an hour everything looked fine again, time to run a background scan.

The science tents

While I was running the test Danny went out with the rest of the science teams and Kris-the-driller to get more samples from a different site than yesterday. We're sampling from different depths to measure if there are any differences in volatile content. One clearly visible difference is that the samples from 1 meter and below are much wetter than the top soil. Unfortunately, we need to get rid of this water first to be able to start measuring without saturating the mass spectrometer (residual gas analyzer, RGA), so we will not be able to show this difference in our data.

After exchanging the blank for a real (1-meter deep wet) sample and leaving that at 50 °C for a while to get rid of the water, it was time to start measuring our second real sample!

Sample preparation table

And then the RGA gave up..... A lot of trouble shooting later, it seemed that there's something wrong with the voltage going to quadrupole rods of the RGA, so we decided to leave it baking at 200 °C for a few hours to get rid of potential contamination and call the company tomorrow.

Lesson 1 - errors that NEVER happen in the lab WILL happen to you in the field.

Lesson 2 - do NOT be stupid and go back to the field site around 23.00 to fill up the generator to keep everything warm.

Around 15.30 we left the system up and running and hiked back to HP-lodge, where just after taking a shower I got a phone call that the generator had died (not out of gas, just dead). Sigh.. But, generator was replaced and by guiding the guy who replaced it, through the different panels on the front, everything seemed to be fine (apart from the bake out temperature that had dropped ~100 °C), so back up and running.

HP-lodge 15:30 (3:30 PM)

Time for a quick nap and dinner, and we took off for a speedy-gonzales trip up to the summit to watch the sunset. On the way to the car I managed to trip over nothing (is the altitude getting me after all?) and land on both knees, hiking tomorrow will be interesting with two bubbles, one on each knee. Pretty pretty pretty, especially with those telescopes in the foreground.

The test site from halfway to the Mauna Kea top.

Subaru, Keck 1, Keck 2.

View towards Kona.

Luckily, we learned lesson 2 quickly enough to implement it right away.

23:45 - generator refilled (thanks to Kris for driving me there), time to go to bed. 5:45 alarm goes off....

VAPoR field testing - Day 2

2010-01-30T21:41:00.010-05:00

Around 12 o'clock (midnight) the alarm in my room went off, which nearly got me a heart attack, especially since I was sure I had checked it was off.

The second attempt at 6 AM was more successful and after quick breakfast it was time to get going.

Becky and Danny hiking to the test site.

Some, probably native, plant.

Another, probably native, plant.

Very NON-native plant, to be removed by field participants when bored.

By 7.20 we had arrived on site and immediately started putting VAPoR together, nearly missing the morning briefing.

VAPoR field unit

Things went very smoothly, so by 9.10 AM everything was unpacked, the field unit was up and running and we decided to get some samples, while the system was pumping down. We started off by just sampling the grey and the yellowish soil across from the site, to test if we would find any differences in these samples.

Sample 1.

Sample 2.

Danny taking the second sample

When we got back to tent it was time to start our first run - a background analysis of an empty sample cell. That didn't turn out very well, since the oven wasn't drawing any current. Some fiddling around with a voltmeter learned us that there was a short or a broken wire somewhere in the oven. Result: even before the first analysis we're down to one oven. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the rest of the test (we're not starting cola and chicken offerings, yet).

The deceased oven ... ;(

What to do when you encounter a disappoint event.. Lunch!

The excellent chef.

Kris and our yummy lunch

After putting the second oven, which we tested before on shorting, in place, we started our second attempt. In the mean time I got the opportunity to collect a solar-illumination-sintered soil sample. The big sintering setup collect sun light and converts it through light fibers into a small spot that can reach about 900 °C and can sinter the soils, such that it forms a hard (asphalt-like) layer. I took a sample of sintered and un-sintered material to analyze how much of the volatiles are still left after sintering (probably very little, since it was heated to 900 °C).

The third set of samples was obtained in collaboration with Kris Zacny from Honeybee Robotics, who is (amongst 15 different things) testing a 5-meter long drill. We got samples from different depths, which will be analyzed by VAPoR, as well as by the Mössbauer spectrometer and the Multispectral Microscopic Imager. This collaboration will give a comprehensive data set of the volatiles, elemental and chemical composition of the soil at different depths.

1-meter deep sampling.

4 meter deep sampling.

Summary of the day, 1 blank analyzed, 1 sample analyzed, quite successful considering the start. Eating, breathing, and sneezing dust. No sun burn yet, not altitude sickness. All very well :)

VAPoR field testing - Day 1

2010-01-29T21:10:00.001-05:00

Around 6 o'clock my internal alarm decided I had enough sleep, so time to get up and get going. 6 o'clock is my regular EST wake-up time, so no noticeable jet lag yet, in contrast to Danny, who was wide awake around 4AM.

After a very pretty drive up we arrived at the Hale Pohaku lodges at 9ish, found our rooms and headed for the Visitors Center where our equipment was already happily waiting for us. Since we didn't have a 4WD and the "transportation" people on site were extremely busy, it had to stay there and be happy for most of our day.

A winding and here and there very steep 1-mile dirt road led us to the actual field site, where we had to check in, get our badge, our very needed coveralls, and our walkie-talkies. The weather was great, making me wonder why I brought all that thermal gear, and coverall with t-shirt and shorts was sufficient. Sunscreen is a bare necessity, as is a hat and glasses and bandana to cover mouth and nose against all the dust. Dust-wise this is definitely a good lunar or Mars analogue.

The staging area of the field site

Day was mainly spend quietly, with having a great lunch, putting up our tent, waiting for equipment, chatting with random other field testers, having a 30-minute Pomelo-break, exchanging Dutch swear-words with first generation Dutch-Americans/Canadians (why is that the only people don't forget are the swear words, goal for this week, teach them some proper Dutch), finally getting our equipment and being too tired to set it up, and hiking back home.

Danny (left) and Tom putting up the tent (me being very helpful by taking pictures)

Danny was smart enough to bring some games, so I got my ... kicked in a game of Pass the Pigs and then beat him with Rummi.

Tomorrow the fun part starts!

Tents

things that happen in an empty office on Thanksgiving Day

2009-11-26T17:40:00.001-05:00

Obama's inauguration

2009-01-20T19:42:00.002-05:00

Today was the day of Obama's inauguration. Google it and you find all you want to know, just some pictures from me.

It was cold, but doable and absolutely impressive.

The Washington Monument at 8.15 in the morning.

The Capitol

> 2 million people

.....

On the way back from the mall

A day at the Mall

2008-11-09T17:13:00.001-05:00

Sunday, Jake and I went to the Mall, where Tents of Hope held their "Gathering of tents" a large display of tents painted by schools, churches, synagogues etc, to draw the attention on Darfur. The tents will be sent to Darfur as well, unfortunately nobody could tell me if they will actually be used as shelters. At least they looked very colourful, so hopefully they do give people some hope out there.

(And hopefully these people also realise that there's enough work to do in the US, where poor people live at the same "wealth" level as people in 3rd world countries, but that's probably cynical to say.)

The tents:

Jake likes to draw:

The rest of the day we spent in the National Gallery watching the Oceans, Rivers and Skies exhibit, with Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, and Alfred Stieglitz photographs and the new very nice Ocean exhibit in the Natural History museum.

Ansel Adams:

Robert Adams:

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2008/oceans/fullscreen/oceansfull.shtm

Alfred Stieglitz:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_49.55.29.jpg

The moving cubes in the sculpture garden, their movement is wind driven:

I love DC :)

Honey Brown Eyes

2008-11-08T17:02:00.001-05:00

Jake is in town and needed some culture before heading back to Huntsville, AL.

No problem for me of course, so I got tickets to Honey Brown Eyes, a play about the war in former Yugoslavia.

The short description:
"Bosnia, 1992. In two kitchens, two soldiers recover a little of what they’ve lost during the war. A Serbian soldier confronts a woman he might have known and is faced with a terrible choice, while a member of the Bosnian resistance takes refuge in what he thinks is an abandoned apartment. Unlikely partnerships emerge in this play of horror, humanity and stunning relevance."

Heavy play, but I thought it was pretty good. At least I felt very uncomfortable and it made me realise again how blessed I am to be born in a peaceful environment and not in a war-zone. Go see it!

(http://dctheatrescene.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/honeybrown.jpg)

(http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/_dev/pubsys/images/1225325182_m_theater_44.jpg)

Reviews:
http://dctheatrescene.com/2008/10/28/honey-brown-eyes/
http://dcist.com/2008/10/31/honey_brown_eyes_theater_js_engross.php
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=36418

Intellligence

2008-11-05T23:30:00.002-05:00

Dennis and I went to see the play Intelligence by Kenneth Cameron, played by Rep Stage.

Synopsis: In his tightly-guarded command post, the head of our national security is challenged by an idealistic young writer, while the fate of a popular leftist leader, now returning to Central America, hangs in the balance.

I'm not sure if the Washington Post liked it that much (review). I did though!

Was worth the effort of driving out all the way to Columbia, MD.

US Elections 2008

2008-11-05T19:05:00.004-05:00

(http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/assets/images/barack-obama-1.jpg)

Yesterday was pretty much D-Day for American politics. For some reason UMBC (the university through which I'm employed at NASA) has a holiday on election day, so I had a day off. Two years ago I couldn't really be bothered and worked, but this year was a different situation of course.

I decided to do some more last minute volunteering, so I spent another 5 hours phonebanking, this time to ask people if they already voted, and if not if they could please do so. I still feel a bit weird about bugging people this way. The atmosphere in the office was great, everybody was extremely enthousiastic and hopeful. Besides for some good cause, it actually a nice way to talk to random strangers.

There was even another Dutchman working at the same office. He actually flew out to help. What is more noble? He wanted to save the world, what about me? The world or my own tax money? Anyway...

Around 6pm I joined a few friends in a bar in Capitol Hill, with about 20 screens broadcasting CNN. At 7pm it started getting exciting, because then the first polls closed (Va). From then on the tension grew. CNN is of course a really optimistic channel - calling states while only 0% of the votes had been counted (..). Each time a state was called for Obama the people started cheering, although most people were still skeptical about all the optimism.

At a little over 23.00, however, 4 states were called for Obama, so the whole crowded started cheering, and 30 secs later Obama was called as winner of the 2008 elections. The whole bar exploded, people started screaming, crying, clapping, it was so unreal. I've seen people being happy for winning games, but this was nearly like someone just anounced the world would not collapse and we would still live on.

After McCains consession speech (NYtimes, youtube), that I actually really liked, and Obama's victory speech (NYtimes, youtube) we headed to the White House where by that time already >1000 people had gathered. Cars drove around on the streets, claxoning, people hanging out of their cars, people in front of the White yelling, singing.

It was really amazing.

This was Times Square, picture by Kris Zacny, my attempt dearly failed, so I have to rely on Washington Post images (WashPost).

Obama-worship?

2008-11-01T18:50:00.000-04:00

Today, I spent 4 hours in the Obama campaign office in Arlington to do some phone banking.

Phone banking means calling people, in this case to ask them if they made up their mind about their vote already, if so what it is (we were calling southern Va, which is primarily Republican), if they need any help to go out voting and if we can still convince them to vote for Obama instead.

This is a kind of political activism that I am not at all used to and I'm not sure if I really like it. I hate being called by random people about random and less random issues. But since I still cannot walk much further than 100 meter, this is pretty much the only thing I can do.

The reason why I decided to participate anyway is that this is the only way I can participate in the upcoming elections. Since I'm a tax paying non-resident, I am not allowed to vote so have no influence on what happens to my tax. Hopefully this still helps a little.

I must say it's easy to have a two party system - you don't have much choice For my personal taste Obama is still too conservative and he still has a lot of opinions I do not agree with (anti gay-marriage, pro death penalty, two name a few), but hey if the other party is even further from your own opinion and you still want to vote, or in my case help the closest party....

Besides, it's a great way to learn something about US culture again.

Two more days - let's see what happens.

lunar exploration

2008-10-30T19:10:00.001-04:00

This week (Oct 28-31) the International Lunar Exploration Working Group, the Space Resources Roundtable and the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group have their annual meeting.

The main part of the meeting was filled with talks about exploration of the Moon, robotic and human outposts, permanent outposts, the Moon as stepping stone for human exploration of Mars.

I'm still not to sure what I think about permanent human outposts anywhere, although I would be the first one to sign up and go (as tried, but that didn't work out that well).

Out of curiosity I would go everywhere, and lunar and martian outposts for scientific purposes (such as an international lunar telescope) sound good to me. But as soon as topics like terraforming (changing the planets "ecosystem" to make it habitable for humans) and mining are discussed (which wasn't the case this time) I always wonder, why not stop messing up the Earth than creating a new habitat so we can leave the Earth as soon as she's exhausted and messed up.

An interesting talk about the science of law and how to create a well-regulated society led me to this website:
http://www.scienceoflaws.com/

And what's the moral of this story? I actually don't know. I was an interesting meeting anyway, with enough food for thought.

This is how I presented my talk today (without the purse).

Science flash

2008-10-30T13:56:00.004-04:00

Somewhere after 4 mins I explain my work on martian methane and dust storms

ScienceFlash 41 - 31 oktober '08 from ScienceFlash on Vimeo.

3 months 25 days later...

2008-10-28T19:17:00.001-04:00

I'm still alive and it's time for some vigorous life update.

Keep checking - it will be a lot of back-posting.

Shenandoah

2008-10-26T21:09:00.001-04:00

Our friend (we drove 45 mph / ~70km/h when I took this picture):

After the Blue Ridge Mountains, Shakespeare in Staunton, and a night in a Bed&Bagel in Raphine (where we actually never got a bagel, but which was a very nice place, with an american and a dutch owner (didn't know)), we drove back home over the Skyline Drive through Shenandoah.

Another very pretty day, much sunnier this time. However, I think I liked the Blue Ridge Mountains better. It was less crowded (it was very foggy that day) and less "developed", more natural.

Plan for next year: fly to Tennessee with bikes and then bike the whole Blue Ridge Parkway and the Skyline Drive back up.

the geologist.....:

and the photographer:

Old-fashioned Shakespeare

2008-10-25T20:52:00.000-04:00

Tonight we went to see Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare in the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va.

From their website: "The American Shakespeare Center is an internationally acclaimed theatre company that performs Shakespeare's works under their original staging conditions -- on a simple stage, without elaborate sets, and with the audience sharing the same light as the actors. Situated in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley in historic Staunton, Virginia, the 300-seat Blackfriars Playhouse -- the world's only re-creation of Shakespeare's original indoor theatre -- opened its doors in September 2001 and has already delighted tens of thousands of enthusiastic audience members from around the world."

The theatre:

(http://www.virginia.edu/travelandlearn/images/blackfriarlit_000.jpg)

(http://www.vcu.edu/vcoa/elderhostel/images/elder1.jpg)

Blue Ridge Mountains

2008-10-25T19:25:00.002-04:00

It's Indian Summer time again, and since I can't do much more than sitting and I was getting bored from sitting at home, we decided that it would be a good idea to move me to the car and get out to the Blue Ridge Mountains to watch the beautifully coloured trees.

We drove 150 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway

(http://www.blueridgeparkway.org/map2.htm)

The first night we stayed at the Meadowood B&B in Meadow of Dan, very very gorgeous, although the trip to the place was interesting to say the least. The clouds hang on the road so we (=Douwe, I was just making up scary stories of getting car trouble in the mist and then being visited by bears...) had to drive in the middle of the road to actually see the markings (no cat-eyes).

My impressively tiny car:

Playing with the white balance of my camera:

dead tree:

red tree:

redder tree:

me.....

Douwe :) (whose hair is longer than mine :s)

Pine Tree Overlook with cloud:

5 minutes later:

with adjusted white balance - without adjusted white balance

and now the fun starts...

2008-10-20T23:33:00.000-04:00

I just got my first hospital bill for my surgery.

Because I am such a sissy that I cannot stand to be operated under fully awake and un-numbed conditions I have to pay $323,- for the luxury of getting anesthetics during my surgery.

Welcome to the American health care system....

I really really wonder what happens if I tell the doctor next time that I'm very tough and I can do the surgery without any form of anesthetics, because I think it is ridiculous to not cover this in your insurance. In principle it's easy money making or should I rather call it blackmailing - if you don't pay you will get hurt, who is not going to to pay for anesthesia for surgery?

Very early Halloween

2008-10-17T21:39:00.002-04:00

Tom Verratti, a kayak friend with a huge house, organised a very early Halloween party today.

Since Halloween and costume parties are something that I still not really have adapted to I borrowed a Zorro-costume from another kayak friend (Ed, the bull rider). However, being just Zorro was again to normal, so I tried to be Zorra, a female Zorro.

Somehow I don't think my costume was very succesfull (being on crutches didn't help of course), but at least it was nice to sit on another chair than the one at home. 3.5 weeks and I can walk again, hurray!

Ed as Ricky Ricardo (Lucy Hall's husband and band leader), Susan as Nemo, Jerry as Jerry and me.

Hollis as pumpkin light, me, Erin as Lucy Ball (very good!!) and Monica as french detective.

Vaclav Havel

2008-10-12T21:49:00.000-04:00

Finally, I decided to sign for Goldstar the cheap ticket source for theatre and other cultural event, and I saw Temptation, by Vaclac Havel.

Mainly out of curiosity, because I only new Havel as president so far and never saw a play by him.

The play is a different version of Faust, it was good and the stage was great!

(http://www.washingtontimes.com/themes/people/vaclav-havel/)

Bob Abell

2008-10-03T22:31:00.002-04:00

Today our very beloved colleague Bob Abell passed away.
He will be dearly missed.

Anke and Peter visiting!

2008-09-30T22:06:00.003-04:00

Anke and Peter are visiting DC for a few days. The plan was to stay with me, but since I'm crippled and my parents are here, they moved to a hotel. Fortunately, we still hung out every night.

Nienke and Emma had picked them up from Dulles. My parents had brought Emma a pair of wooden shoes, which she wore the rest of the night, on my wooden floor. Poor Kelly downstairs thought we were bowling with marbles.

Anke, Emma, Peter

We watched the Biden-Palin debate at Kelly's place, which was an interesting experience with 4 Dutch, 1 Dutch living in the US and 1 American. There are clearly some culture differences in debating.

Short hair

2008-09-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

Time for a change again, better pics will follow...

This is still way too official.

My foot

2008-09-29T21:58:00.000-04:00

The splint is off, this is what it looks like now....

(Yes, my toe-nails match my crutches)

Lovely parents!!!

2008-09-28T22:13:00.004-04:00

My parents took a week off to fly out and help me getting around in my crippled state (my new nickname is Cripp, even my boss addresses me that way :s).

In the mean time they touristed around a saw the musea that they hadn't seen so far, taking me with them in the weekend.

Saturday we visited the National Galleries, where a lot a famous Dutch paintings are exhibited, including:

I'd never been there either and it was great! All the famous Vermeers, Rembrandts, Hals' just hanging there for free. I was pushed around in a wheel chair and got great views of everything. Super!

Sunday we went to the Jim Henson / Muppet exhibit in the International Center (didn't know that existed until then). It was great seeing all the drawings and sketches he made for all his shows.

and of course the Great Gonzo, after whom I've named my car :)

Sunday night the Blind Boys of Alabama were performing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans in the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center is a very formal art center with very formal people in the audience, we were all the way up in the second tier (cheap tickets, still good view) and the whole audience was swinging its head off. It was very very funny to see all those very formally dressed people doing a polonaise between the chairs.

The Jazz Band was great. The Blind Boys were amazing as well. They are really blind so had to be pulled back all the time to not fall off the stage, which was kind of a funny gimmick. The main singer is with the band already since 1939 and his voice was still great.

Although the text was sometimes a bit too praise-the-lord for me the concert was absolutely an experience, I've never seen people swinging and dancing so much in a "classical" concert hall.

The Jester Rehab Center

2008-09-22T23:02:00.000-04:00

Nienke took care of me the whole weekend after my surgery. She picked me up from the hospital in a very groggy state and delivered me back home this afternoon. She's so sweet, taking care of me, with a 2.5 year old and a 7-month pregnant belly.

Besides that we actually had a lot of fun and it was great catching up for a weekend!

Emma is being prepped by pilot-daddy

Surgery :(

2008-09-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

Somehow I managed to chip a fragment off a bone in my foot. And when the doctor decided to take an MRI the cartilage of my ankle was messed up as well.

So I had to get surgery to (1) take out the fragment and (2) remove part of my cartilage (3x3 mm) and drill in my ankle bone, so the bone&cartilage will heal itself again.

Surgery lasts for half an hour, but then - no weight on the foot for 6-7 weeks and no running for another 4 months :s

This is the bone chip:

this is the severe form: osteoarthritis (it's not that bad)
and this is what they did to repair it: Articular_cartilage_repair

Astronaut application part VII

2008-09-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

Dear Ms ten Kate,

On behalf of the European Space Agency, I wish to thank you for your application and interest in joining the European Astronaut Corps. I would like to express to you our gratitude for your interest in human spaceflight, and for your motivation to become an astronaut. You have indeed passed an important step, by being amongst the applicants invited for the first round of tests.

I regret, however, to inform you that following this first round of tests and after very careful consideration, it has been decided not to retain your application for the post of Astronaut. If you would like us to delete your file please let us know at astronautselection@esa.int. However, should you not object, we would like to keep your file on record for other career opportunities at ESA and contact you if a post which matches your profile should emerge.

I would also like to direct your attention to ‘Careers at ESA’ website in which we advertise all current external vacancies. You may also be interested in subscribing to our recently introduced job alert feature. In order to receive the regular updates on vacant positions at ESA, please click

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Careers_at_ESA/index.html

and follow the link ‘Subscribe to ESA vacancy notices’.

On behalf of the European Space Agency, I wish you all the best for your further career.

......

I guess I have to start looking for a new youth dream......

Diving in the Turkish Mediterrenean Sea

2008-09-15T16:30:00.000-04:00

Finally my first dive! The Mediterrenean Sea with its visibility of >20m and water temperature of 20-25 °C is indeed much better than a quarry .....

My parents gave me an underwater disposal camera - so this is more or less what it looked liked.

fish!

more fish!

me and fish

douwe and fish

sea urchins (and fish!)

evil looking sea urchin

a 4000-year old amphora (according to our dive master)

douwe

me and another 4000-year old vase

Astronaut application part VI

2008-07-03T08:39:00.002-04:00

Whooohooooo!!!!

Dear Ms ten Kate,

Following the congratulatory note you have received from the Head of the European Astronaut Centre, I take pleasure in inviting you to the first battery of psychological tests on

Date: Monday, 21st of July 2008
Time 08:00 – 18:00 hours
Venue: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR)

....

I would like to join my colleague in congratulating you for having reached this stage of the astronaut selection process and wish you the very best for your further participation.

Kind regards,

Head of the Human Resources Division, ESOC
European Space Agency

This is a sample of the tests we need to do:

http://webservices.esa.int/eas/sampletest/

Astronaut application part V

2008-06-17T09:37:00.001-04:00

Dear Inge ten Kate,

We would like to inform you that your application has been submitted successfully and in time. We will now begin our evaluation and contact you within the next six weeks.

Once submitted, you can check the status of your application by browsing your data file where you can see the sentence "Your application has already been submitted and can not be changed" on each data page. This indicates a successful closure of your database.

Kind regards,

European Space Agency

REM

2008-06-11T23:03:00.001-04:00

Danny, Florence, Douwe and I went to see REM at Merriweather.

Finally, because I had at least one REM show canceled on me, because one of them fell ill.

Micheal Stipe is slightly weird, but the cool kind of weird, and they gave a very good show!

No camera pictures this time, so only a video:

Astronaut application part VI

2008-06-09T21:44:00.003-04:00

Done, gone...

Today I submitted my astronaut application to ESA...

Let's see what happens.

No clue when to expect an answer, or how many applications there are. We'll see I did the best I can.

Billy Goat Tornado Trail

2008-06-05T22:08:00.007-04:00

For a new project I will be working on next year, a laser absorption mass spectrometer (more about that when I actually work on it), I had to get my eyes examined (I assume they want to know the conditions of your eyes before your mess them up with a laser). Of course I made an appointment at 10.15 AM, totally forgetting that your eyes nee to get dilated in order to be examined. So when I came out the test at 12.00 my vision was like this:

Inge's vision vs Normal vision

So since I couldn't read anything anyway, Douwe (who is here for two weeks) and I decided to walk the Billy Goat Trail (at the great falls). The weather forecast was torndao watch, heavy gusts, rain, more rain and thunderstorms so why not.

Me and blue hair:

The C&O tow path (and one of my kayak paddling practice spots, see last year august).

Turtle family:

Branch of the Potomac:

Bad weather approaching...

The tornado:

In the 10 minutes it took us to get back to the same spot at the second picture, already three trees had fallen over... This wasn't the smartest hike ever. Fortunately Old Angler's Inn was kind enough to give us some shelter, before we slalomed home past all the broken trees.

the Raconteurs

2008-05-27T22:04:00.004-04:00

Micah (co-work-friend) and I went to see the Raconteurs in the 930 club, my favourite concert spot in DC. Small and nice acoustics. And being from the country with the tallest people in the world (at least that's what NPR, public radio told me) always a good view of the stage.

And a bit a short version of one of my favourite songs (thanks YouTube).

:)

2008-05-26T10:11:00.003-04:00

from: http://www.foksuk.nl/

(Fokke & Sukke are life on Mars
"No. They again did not send Scarlett Johansson"
"Bummer")

PHOENIX HAS LANDED!

2008-05-25T22:26:00.004-04:00

First lander on the North (or actually any) pole of Mars!!!

credit: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

credit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

credit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

Paul on TV! Including the Quote of the Week

2008-05-24T22:54:00.003-04:00

This is Paul, my beloved "boss" interviewed, because of tomorrow's Phoenix landing:

http://wjz.com/video/?id=39153@wjz.dayport.com

Unfortunately couldn't embed the movie, nor get rid of the commercial before, but it's nice anyway.

Please note the quote in the beginning:

"Mars is like the perfect Martini, extremely cold and extremely dry"

Tomorrow exciting day!!!! Phoenix to be landing on Mars!

Astronaut application part III

2008-05-21T21:56:00.003-04:00

After 24 hours and 8 minutes I got my password!

Hurray, now I can really apply!

I did not know that even waiting for a password could make one a little nervous...

Keep you posted!

Pakjes!!!

2008-05-21T21:34:00.002-04:00

Today there was a big big pakje in the mail! No clue from whom until I opened it.

Thanks kleinezus!!! A Dutch survival package for in the American wilderness.

Astronaut application part II

2008-05-20T21:27:00.003-04:00

Today I registered for the astronaut application process of the European Space Agency.

Registration is step 1 and involves creating an account by submitting you address and a medical certification. Either JAR-FCL 3 Class 2, or FAA class 2 medical certificate.

Then you get the following message and you wait 24 hours....

Scuba certification

2008-05-18T21:42:00.009-04:00

Marvin, my friend from work, asked me a couple of weeks ago if I was scuba certified, because he wanted to get his license. Great idea and finally a good reason to get certified and start diving!

The first past of the course consisted of 5 theory classes combined with 5 pool sessions. The first dive in the pool was a mess, I floated in all directions expect for the one I wanted to go to, and could not at all control my buoyancy. However, the second class already went much better. It was very comforting to notice how quickly you get used to breathing through a regulator under water.

Marvin:

After 5 session swimming and hovering around in the pool it was time for the real thing, being a 4-dive test in the Millbrook Quarry, VA.

This is the quarry, visibility this weekend: horrible, 6 ft (~ 2 meter):

Saturday the sun was out and the air temperature was nice (~ 70 °F = 21 °C). The water temperature at 30 ft (10 meter, I learn how to dive in the US, so everything in ft and F) was a little more chilly though: 49 °F = 9 °C. This still sounds quite all right, but in a 7 mm (this is then in mm again...) wet suit, it's pretty cold, not to say extremely uncomfortable at the second dive.

Sunday, though, the water temperature was the same , but the air temperature had dropped to 16 °C and the sun had taken a day off. BRRRRRRR

But of course we "ultratough people" had no problems with the cold whatsoever!

Briefing before the dive:

David in his hot-water-commercial (bring warm water on cold days and poor it in your suit before making the second dive, then your suit is filled with warm water already. Of course on Sunday nobody had thought about hot water...)

Linda showing part of our two-piece suit (the second layer had sleaves and short legs, pretty warm combo, though).

Me in full gear:

On the way to the quarry:

....

And the debrief between dive 1 and 2:

We all passed and got certified and very motivated to go to a different spot with at least a little higher change of seeing something at all!

And some free advertisement for instructor Paul Washington (I still have to make a deal, please refer to me if you found him on my site, perhaps I gain a free course for another certification!).

Aren't they cute?

2008-05-16T16:56:00.001-04:00

MER - Sojourner - MSL
courtesy JPL/NASA

Astronaut application part I

2008-05-15T21:56:00.000-04:00

Next step in the application process:

The pilot medical test.

ESA requires a JAR-FCL3 class 2 medical test. Living in the USA makes getting a JAR test a bit difficult, because JAR are the regulations of the JAA - Joint Aviation Authorities - the European organisation. The USA has its own organisation, the FAA - Federal Aviation Authorities. Of course those authorities have different medical tests, but ESA was kind enough to provide a list of required tests, so I got the FAA-Class 2 and some additional tests.

Fortunately I'm healthy enough to apply :)

Blue Wednesday

2008-05-14T21:54:00.002-04:00

Finally,....

Radiohead

2008-05-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

It's that time of the year again. Lucky me Radiohead and the Cure did not play at the same day :)

Radiohead was a very very good concert as well! I had managed to get tickets about 3 meters from the stage, so excellent view of the band and Thom Yorke.

The trip was a mess. Zan just moved to Goddard and DC as well, so went to Radiohead together, on the way in it took us 2 hours 45 mins (just to compare, the venue is next door from Nienke, that normally takes me 45 mins). It rained like crazy and half Virginia, DC and Maryland were flooded apparently. We arrived just in time and got to the stage 2 mins into the first song.

The concert then was great, and lasted until 23.05. By 23.20 we had swam back to the car - the whole area around the stage was flooded, and that was that. After 3 hours on the parking lot something finally cleared up and by 2.30 am I was home...... I don't think I will ever go there again.

But I do have some cool cell phone pictures though!

And of course some music too, not their most well-known song, but somehow I get happy of depressing music...

(Thank you youtube)

The Cure

2008-05-09T23:10:00.004-04:00

Finally saw the Cure live!

That was pretty cool! Especially since they played for 3 full hours!!!!

My cell phone impression:

And just in case you don't know the Cure, this is one of the happiest songs they made:

(nicely stolen from youtube)

Some more Letty-days

2008-04-08T22:43:00.003-04:00

Monday I took a day off and we planned to all kinds of cultural things. So by the time we left my place it was already so late that half of the cultural things had past already, so we went to the International Spy Museum. Nice museum, but we had the feeling we were a little over-aged. The coolest thing in the museum: the James Bond Aston Martin DB 5:

Yummy!

After a very short shopping session we decided to end Letty's stay in a very culturally way and we went to see: Horton hears a Who, after a the book by Dr Seuss. I love Dr. Seuss, so I was all happy. I think Letty enjoyed the movie too :)

Tuesday we had a relaxed breakfast and then we decided to make a tradition of running through the Zoo for an hour before going to the airport. I showed Letty the naked mole-rats, my favourites. They're housed in transparent plastic tubing and are hilarious! They are pretty ugly though.

And that was the end of our nice weekend here :) Most important decisions made during the weekend:

We should do this more often.

January next year, we're going to Tanzania!

Don't forget to enjoy life in general and if that's not the case, try to change something.

Very good and fruitfull weekend!

Cherry Blossoms

2008-04-06T22:36:00.007-04:00

After my 10-miler we went on a photosafari trip. Basically, a professional photographer takes you around and explains how to take good pictures.

The main theme of the day - how to stay warm. Being optimistic and in a touristy mood, we had decided that 5 °C with a nice strong wind, was something we could easily handle. So we left, Letty in my green wind-tight jacket and I in my thick orange winter coat. At about 1/3rd of the trip Letty was so undercooled we had to switched coats. So then it was my time to freeze.

But we got some nice pics out of it!

Letty in action

Cherry Blossoms

More cherry blossoms

The Washington monument and cherry blossoms

They were really really pretty, but it was soooo gray it was nearly impossible to catch them nicely..

After the coat swap, Jefferson memorial in the back, exactly where it should be for a good picture according to our instructor (who also took this picture...)

The inhabitant of the memorial

And the inhabitant of another monument arriving at home just in time for the afternoon tea (although tea in Bush's case?)

To stay in the Japanese theme we ended our night in a Japanese restaurant around the corner, where we ate a 7-course meal, with 6 different sakes :)

Letty in town

2008-04-06T22:02:00.002-04:00

Joepie, my kleinezus Letty was here for a whole long weekend!!!

Of course the weekend was way to full, but still, we had enough time to catch up (which was very necessary), get some sleep (fortunately no too bad jetlag for Letty).

Short overview:

Thursday she landed, the weather sucked (excusez..) and I never made it to Dulles. She had a > 3 hour delay, because of some technical issue and then because the plane did not want to undock from the gate..... :s By the time I had decided to pick her up after all instead of letting her take the shuttle, the weather had turned out to be so bad and the traffic was such a mess, that it took me nearly 2 hours to get home, and she was still better of taking the shuttle.. Stupid me... anyway.

Friday night Kelly, my neighbour, got us tickets for some after work event at the Hirshhorn museum. These event are usually one big meat market, but instead we nearly spent the whole night (3 hours) actually looking at the collection in the museum. Very nice museum, mainly sculptures, and some other exhibits.

Saturday I had to go to an introduction day for the DC Shorts film festival, for which I volunteered as judge, so Letty came along. Bit long, with some introduction games and a short course on how to judges movies. Formed an interesting team of judges, a deputy attorney general, a freelance PR lady, a film maker and festival organiser and me.

We picknicked at a square on Penn Ave, enjoying a demonstration of swing dancing. These people could actually dance very well! It was very enjoyable to see them all happy swinging in downtown DC. After lunch we went to Chrystal City to pick up my bib for the Cherry Blossom 10-miler. Number 13013. That was about and the rest of the day we spent hanging out on the couch, drinking gluten-free beer.

Sunday 7.50 AM was the start (why-oh-why sooo early? I guess you then still have the rest of your day to do something? I can't really do much more if I ran hard enough..) of the Cherry Blossom 10-mile. I wasn't really well-trained, and the weather was chilly (about 8 °C), but still I ran a PR! (No wonder, since my previous 10 mile was Annapolis, with only hills, and mainly up, at least that's how that felt).

My goal: under 1:40.

My time: 1:38:48 !!!

Great, new PR! (proof "borrowed" from marathonfoto.com).

Biking and Eels

2008-03-29T14:41:00.001-04:00

Oren talked me into riding a metric century (100 km) call the Icycle Metric. It was only about 8 °C and windy so good start for a long ride. Being optimistic as always, 100 km should be doable and if not there was a lunch stop at 53 km where we could stop and catch a ride back.

Well, I don't know where I got the idea that Maryland/Delaware were flat, but I think the longest flat part we rode was less than a km. The good news was - my legs are fine! Now I only have to get into better physical shape to actually sprint up those hills instead of getting there with 6 km/hr (yes, yes, walking is faster).

Good decision was made to stop after 53 km. Oren was cramping up and his broken toe was not really cooperating, I was still quite allright, but another 50 km would have been too much for me too.

So lesson learned: cycle a longer trip than 25 km before you sign up for a 100 km. It was a lot of fun though and the scenery was very pretty!

After Jen and I went to the Eels concert. Eels is a band consisting of singer/songwriter Mark Everett and a changing number of other people.

The concert was different and great. Instead of a preshow a BBC documentary was shown about Everett's search for his father, Hugh Everett, a famous physicist, who came up with the idea of multiple universes or many-worlds interpretation. I thought a very cool way to open a show! I'm not sure what the rest of the audience thought, though.

The concert was played by Everett and one companion, who together played and switched during playing: piano, guitar, drums, singing saw, table steel guitar, and both sung.

High ranking in best concerts ever seen list!

This is Eels:

The art of polishing

2008-03-28T14:24:00.000-04:00

A week ago I decided it was a good idea to rebuilt my experimental setup. This meant taking everything apart and putting everything back in a little bit different position.

This is what it used to look like:

What I'm trying to do in this setup is creating static electric discharge in some gas mixture at martian atmospheric pressure (7 mbar) and measure if I see changes in the chemical composition of the gas mixture, using a quadrupole mass spectrometer:

I did get some results in a plain CO2 mixture, but when I started using a misture of CO2 and methane all kinds of weird things happened and by modifying the setup I'm hoping to prevent a couple of those things.

One of the changes I'm making is, making the electrode, that I use as high voltage supply for the discharge, easier accessible for cleaning. Here I'm polishing the electrode. James, "my" postdoc colleague in Leiden would be proud of me..

Hopefully more progress reports soon...

Easter at the Jester's

2008-03-23T13:19:00.005-04:00

This weekend I stayed over at the Nienke-John-Emma mansion. I had not seen them in a while so it was time to catch up and besides that I thought that Emma (nearly 2 now) is old enough to be taught the art of egg painting.

The night before I had the honour of putting Emma in bath and to bed. Results were wet.

How to rinse your mouth after brushing teeth...

The next morning, breakfast in bed wit chocolate easter eggs :

Emma painting:

The results, lucky enough the picture is not large enough to show that all eggs, but one, are broken, because Emma decided to drop the eggs on the floor after she was done painting them, instead of nicely on the table.

And the egg hunt in the garden:

My First Shuttle Launch !!

2008-03-11T15:31:00.006-04:00

Last week Oliver and I decided to get cheap tickets to fly out to Orlando to watch space shuttle Endeavour being launched. Going for a shuttle launch is of course a little risky, knowing the change of the shuttle actually launching on time. We definitely challenged our luck by flying in at 9.20 pm and leaving the next day at 11.40 am again. If there would be no launch, we would have spent a nice but a little useless night at the shores on Titusville.

So, we landed at 9.20, and waited about an hour for a rental car on the Orlando airport, where all restaurants close at 10 pm. Fortunately I brought my sandwiches with applespread (never leave unprepared, right).

Just before leaving we decided that booking a hotel would not be such a bad idea, so first we drove off to the hotel to pick up the keys. The launch was scheduled for 2.28 am, so we had more than enough time.

Finally just after midnight finally dinner time, and by then of course there's only one food chain still open... I've been trying to avoid this chains since I got here and I managed to do so until today... I guess at some point food is more important than some principles, especially since there's still a couple of hours to kill.

Picknick in the car:

Then we drove out to Titusville and found ourselves not being to only ones wanting to watch the launch. Not a good sign for leaving after, but I was very happy to see that people still make the effort to see the shuttle go up!! At least space flight is still a little sexy. (MAY I PLEASE REMIND MY DEAR READERS THAT SPACE FLIGHT IS EXTREMELY SEXY!!!)

We found ourselves a nice spot on the shore right in front of the launch pad, just about 12 miles away... So then we had to wait for another 2 hours. I brought two cameras and we borrowed Paul's very nice binoculars. No tripod unfortunately, but I was afraid that would not make it through security.

And of course Jip and Janneke came along as well!

Oliver waiting....

Oliver quickly getting the binolculars not to leave the impression that he was constantly sleeping ;)

Which he wasn't, thanks for this picture, Oliver :) (I'm texting my parents to tell them that they have to watch CNN to see the launch as well)

This was our view of the launch pad - top view is the best I could do without tripod, the bottom view is taken with my pocket camera through Paul's binoculars, using Oliver's head as a camera stand. Or camera shake perhaps.

Ten seconds before the launch the whole crowd started counting down, and exactly on time the space shuttle lifted off. Wow, that was cool! Seeing all the smoke and the light, impressive (understament) and ultracool (also understatement). I decided just to absorb the launch and not take pics, since I didn't want to miss anything.

This is what we saw:

(picture borrowed from APOD, credit James N Brown)

And this is what we never saw due to the clouds....:

(APOD, Credit NASA, Jerry Cannor, Rusty Backer)

The sounds was quite impressive, although we were a bit too far out, to really feel it, and it took a while to reach us. The shuttle had already disappeared in the clouds when we finally heard it being launched.

Major conclusions drawn from this:

A) I want to see this again, but then closer

B) I want to go myself!

This was really really cool!!!!!!!

After 1.5 hours traffic jam we finally reached the hotel for 3.5 hours of sleep...

Just some funny pictures of the car (we got the economy cheap car...)

And some more links:

http://www.nu.nl/news/1473266/81/Spaceshuttle_Endeavour_succesvol_gelanceerd.html#

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/launch_blog.html

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.rss.html?pid=27293

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1425923369/bctid1452257909

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/

http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=4

Sunday Run

2008-03-09T22:35:00.005-04:00

I signed up for the Cherry Blossom 10-miler on April 6th, so need to get some miles in. I think I just keep aiming for 1.40, I should be able to do better with more focused training, but I don't really see the focused training happening. So I just run 3 times a week and do some yoga and if time some skating or biking and then we'll see.

In NL I went spinning twice, and it feels like that's actually helping my running! Even only those two times!

This is what I ran today, about 15 km in 1 hr 37 mins 28 sec. Took two walking breaks to swallow a Gu (can't call it eating, it's so disgusting (except for the chocolate flavour)), but it works so well! Discovered something new as well: Sport Jelly Belly Beans. They're great! Same effect, but your have to chew them, which immediately tricks your brain, because it thinks you're actually filling upt your stomach, so the empty stomach feeling disappears. Disadvantage: watch out during running not to choke!

Omi

2008-02-28T22:10:00.004-05:00

This is Omi, my 88-year old grandmother after whom I've been named. She's slowly getting a little older and her short term memory is slowly fading, but still going strong. It must be very frustrating when you notice that you start forgetting things when you're getting older, especially when you were a very bright person, like Omi. It's always very nice to see her! And I'm sure she's the only one in her elderly home who has a map of Mars on her bathroom door :)

Omi is very good at keeping old pictures, including pictures I didn't even know existed...

This is me in 1998 (yep 10 years ago) on my way to the Gala night my student society organised in the Orangerie of Versailles. That was very cool. Walking around in the gardens of Versailles in this dress with Victor in his penguin suite felt pretty imperial.

Lecture at SRON

2008-02-26T21:20:00.016-05:00

While being in the Netherlands I took the opportunity to give a talk at SRON, the Space Research Organisation of the Netherlands, in which I gave an overview of the work I'm doing here.

Here a few slides of my presentation.

Abel and Mads

2008-02-24T21:32:00.010-05:00

It seems like the whole world around me is multiplying and being in the Netherlands gave me the change to see two very well succeeded examples of this multiplication effort.

ABEL

First of course the new member of my family: Abel, today 1 month and 1 day old.

Abel and papa Daniel:

Uncle Ruben (my cousin & Eva's brother and cool pianist, full member of the Dutch hip hop-funk-band Pete Philly and Perquisite).

Abel en mama Eva:

Abel and Inge (yes I'm aware of the not so intelligent look on my face...):

I have to admit that aging helps with the appreciation of kids.. A few years ago having children was absolutely out of the question, but now... we'll see perhaps in a few years? Then I still have some time to grow up:

MADS

Douwe's brother Lars and his wife Dieuwke got their first child yesterday, so I had the honour of seeing (and actually holding) this 24-hour old tiny and very cute and satisfied manneke, Mads:

The proud uncle was very proud :)

Room with a view?

2008-02-22T22:46:00.001-05:00

The view from my desk in Douwe's office at Fort Hoofddijk in Utrecht. It took quite some effort to actually take this picture, everytime I moved the bird flew away. With my moving rate the bird at least got it's exercise. The amount of food however...

Letty Young Professional Advisor of 2008!!!!!

2008-02-21T23:33:00.006-05:00

Today was the big day. The selection of the Young Professional of the Year, Netherlands, 2008!

The event was held in an old church modified into a club (hotel Arena, click on the link ToNight and you see how pretty it is).

And this was the major goal: the YPY-award:

The candidates were divided in three groups, Specialists, Managers and Advisors, Letty's category. The winners of each category were selected by a jury (50%) and an online voting campaign (50%).

Before the actual naming of the winners a short promo-movie of each candidate was shown:

And the winner of the Advisor was............ !!!!!!!!!!

Letty!!!!!!!

(Thanks all for voting so enthousiastically!!! It definitely worked out!)

After naming all three winners, the next round was an interrogation round, with questions like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?", "What do you want to change in you company?", "What is your biggest mistake?" etc.

The three winners, Frodo for Managers, Letty for Advisors and Bram for Specialists.

A journalist from the Volkskrant presented the event, held the microphone during the question session, and had obviously never heard of "Getting too close" and "Invading someones personal space". In my opinion a very blunt way of interrogation:

When the jury was debating about the winner, the three winners had to name the most important person in the audience who then had to climb the stage and tell the audience why he/she had to win. I had the honour to praise my little sister :)

Here I'm trying to convince the world that she is really smart and she does a lot of good for the health system.

Nervous candidates waiting for the verdict.

Unfortunetaly, Letty did not win the overall award (which was won by Frodo, whom I think was second best :)), but she did a very good job and we are all very very very very very very very very enormously (sorry big sister - little sister thing) proud of her!

(and something for my personal account, they showed my blog in the opening film on the efforts that the candidates had made to get people to vote.)

Ames

2008-01-28T00:44:00.000-05:00

Just to get an idea of the panoramic capabilities of the camera in my mobile phone, still have to practise a bit, this is Moffet Field, where Ames Research Center is located.

On the rightish is the enormous wind tunnel, and in the middle background is the huge hangar, where a huge zeppelin called Macon was stored:

(from wikipedia)

From the historic Moffet Field website:

"Unlike other dirigibles of the time, the Macon was so massive that it also carried its own aircraft - five Sparrowhawk planes which were stored in the aircraft's hangar deck. The airplanes were released via a trapeze and a harness which lowered the planes through a T-shaped hangar opening in the Macon's underside.Retrieving the planes, however was a much more difficult process.
Like a performing air stunt, the pilots had to equal their speed to that of the ship and "catch" the trapeze with a hook at the top of the plane. The harness would then be attached to the fuselage, and the aircraft would be raised into the hangar deck. Despite the difficulty of the maneuver, the pilots, known as the "Men on the Flying Trapeze" had a flawless record on both the Akron and Macon.
The ship also came equipped with another scouting oddity known as the "spy" car. A cable would lower the amusing-looking compartment from the airship to a point below cloud cover up to 1,000 feet. A crewman inside the spy car would then telephone back to the main control room relaying navigational information. The car acted as a sort of reverse periscope."

This must have been an amazing sight!

Please note the dike I'm standing on while taking the picture. I went running along the site, there's a trail on a dike path leading to marshes and wetlands - it nearly felt like home.

On the road - Ventura Beach to Mountain View

2008-01-25T00:22:00.000-05:00

This morning the "Origin of Life" conference was concluded with breakfast, time to move on.

Monday through Wednesday there's another workshop I will attending, this time on "Cyanobacteria in lunar environments", at NASA Ames. I will present the current status of our VAPoR instrument (see blog in Aug) and we will have discussions on possible research on and use of cyanobacteria on the moon.

To get to Ames from Ventura Beach, it is as fast to drive as to fly, and Andrew Pohorille (the organiser of the workshop) offered me a ride. So we drove up (in a very comfortably Jaguar S type, racing green of course) on the 101.

This is sunny California in January:

Abeltje

2008-01-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

Today around 17.30 was born Abel Hein Mogendorff, son of Eva Hein (my "little" cousin) and Daniel Mogendorff, and the first of the next generation in our family.

It's an interesting feeling to realise that we're not longer the generation of children.