Date and time: 24 April 2012
Written by: Mike Bodnar, Crew 118, First Officer
This morning three of us - Flight Engineer Don Stewart, Commander Haritina Mogosanu and myself performed an EVA in full spacesuits and breathing apparatus, starting early in the morning before it got too hot.
Image taken from inside the HAB
It brings out the poet in you as you walk across an environment that from a distance is a blur of pastel shades of ochres, reds, whites, pinks and browns, but close up is just stunning in its detail and variety of forms.
For example, you can be strolling across a field of red soil scattered with stones - looking for all the world like the images of the Martian surface sent back by various landers since 1975 - and then go round a rock and to find blinding white sands, Henry Moore-sculpted rocks topped with slabs of harder rock, some precariously balanced. We saw a Flintstone house this morning, and nearby a pedestal table.
It's a landscape for the imaginative, and would appeal to aficionados of art as much as archeologists, or wannabe astronauts. It's also a photographer's paradise.
However, as we approached Phobos Peak, about 1.3 kilometres from the Hab, we were already feeling tired due to the weight of the backpacks and the helmets. The illusion of being on Mars while wearing the EVA suits is total, especially in an alien landscape such as this, but it also gives us a good appreciation of what explorers will face on Mars itself.
The hard shell suits used by the Apollo explorers on the moon are unlikely to be much use on the red planet, and various initiatives are underway to develop more user-friendly suits. Nevertheless, exploring another planet will be a demanding challenge.
You won't blame us then for removing the spacesuits at the base of Phobos before we climbed up. Discomfort apart, it would have been dangerous to attempt the climb up the occasionally slippery rock and shale slope.
The view from the top of the peak is stunning, and we could see the Hab in the distance, a tiny white speck in the panorama.
Commander Mogosanu spent most of the climb on her hands and knees, taking close-up shots of lichens. The photo album on her laptop now looks like an artist's palette.
But the view also gave us a clear appreciation of the sedimentary layering of the landscape, and the incredible age of the surrounding area. We indulged in many a geological discussion during the EVA, despite none of us being geologists! Still, it was fun doing detective work, speculating as to why some rocks erode faster than others, why some are green in an otherwise red landscape, and how like another world it all is.
In other activities today, Mission Specialists Ali Harley and Annalea Beattie took the 360 degree panorama camera gear out to take shots of the Martian landscape for Mission Control back on Earth.
And in the afternoon Hari and Health and Safety Office Bruce set off in the pressurised rover to locate the resupply module which had more food supplies for the Hab, including chocolate. Yay!
ENDS.