Reports from the 2009 AMASE Field Expedition

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2009/08/06 07:00 CDT

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Now that it's high summer in the Arctic, it's time for research expeditions to swarm northward to explore icy landscapes as analogues to Mars and other far-off places. This year's Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) sounds like lots of fun: a crew from JPL is bringing up a FIDO rover (a six-wheeled testbed for Mars rover instruments) and using it to test out some instruments for future use on Mars Science Lab (which I suppose I should be calling Curiosity now) and ExoMars (which has recently been delayed to a 2018 launch, so I guess they have plenty of time to do tests like these). I was contacted a few weeks back by one of the AMASE expedition members, Juan Diego Rodriguez, who's now sending back reports from the far north, and who has also forwarded some entries from one Adrienne Kish. Read their reports here and follow the fun of the expedition!