HMP e-Logbook
As the field season progressed, the MIT team recorded and posted daily a record of their activities, along with a few selected photos.
The field site's logbook has been duplicated here.
July: 8 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 August: 1 2 3 4-6
July 26, 2005
Written by Sarah Shull
3....2....1....Liftoff! Shortly after breakfast this morning the entire camp reconvened in the mess hall to watch Discovery take to the sky — what a beautiful sight (even through a somewhat shaky internet connection)!
In addition to being a great day for human spaceflight, today was also a very productive day for the MIT HMP team. Jaemyung and I inventoried the entire "new" office tent and ensured that the inventory of the research tent 1 (formerly the office tent) was still accurate since some of the items had moved to the new office tent. We also worked with John, the camp manager, to continue the inventory of the core tent. The core tent inventory is now complete with the exception of the tools, which will be inventoried later this week.
Today was also the first day that we were able to observe how well the ATV tracking system works when all 14 ATVs are tagged. The system works pretty well but is not perfect. We have several theories as to what is causing the missed readings. The first is people driving the ATVs by the reader at an excessive speed. During our testing the reader was able to sense the RFID tag only when the ATV was driven by at a moderate speed. We also suspect that the cold weather is having a negative impact on the read range of the active tags. The tags are definitely not meeting the manufacturer's claims for distance. We will continue taking data on the accuracy of the ATV experiment throughout the week.
Elsewhere around camp several important experiments were run today. Dr. Jeff Jones, the camp doctor, performed a very successful telemedicine session with doctors at Johnson Space Center. Sophie Caro, from the University of Paris, filled in as the "sick" patient while Dr. Mona Khanna, medical correspondent for CBS News in Dallas-Fort Worth, performed an ultrasound exam of Sophie's abdomen and pelvis with direction from Dr. Jones and doctors at the Space Center in Houston. A live camera feed of both the patient and the display on the ultrasound was sent to Houston for analysis. Telemedicine is currently practiced on the International Space Station (ISS) and will become even more important as we send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars.
After dinner this evening, Pascal Lee reported that the Hamilton-Sunstrand Space Suit Team will be flying in tomorrow evening, instead of Friday morning. This also means that our MIT EVA team, Julie Arnold and Jessica Marquez, will be arriving tomorrow with them. Jaemyung and I are looking forward to their arrival!
