ASU Mars Day 2.2 Reflections

Day 2.2 Moenkopi Mars Analog

The Moenkopi is a layer of red sandstone that sits on top of the Coconino limestone that is the top strata of the Grand Canyon. It is a late deposit and our goal as Martian geologist apprentices was to find signs of habitability.



"Follow the water." Has been the mission goal/directive thus far of the NASAs Mars Exploration Program. Doing so has led the orbiters, landers and rovers to find signs of the ingredients necessary to support life. I write this on the 1st Martian Year for MSL Curiosity. MSL has successfully found signs of habitability in Yellowknife Bay. I witnessed the launch from the Kennedy Space Center Press Site, standing year the infamous countdown clock, and witnessed Entry, Descent & Landing at Goddard Space Flight Center. I've met several of the NASA Mars scientists and engineers at various events. I've followed Curiosity as she made every wheel skuff, selfie, drill hole, and drive. I've held my breath, cheered, and even shed a few tears over the past three years. But like every other human, I've not experienced Mars first hand. The visit to the Moenkopi Mars Analog site is the closest place on Earth to Yellowknife Bay on the floor of Gale Crater that I've ever seen.



We left the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and passed through the Little Colorado canyon. An equally beautiful canyon that cuts through the Navajo and Hopi Nations. Hogans and trading posts were scattered along the road. The landscape was expansive. The wide plains intersected by canyon cuts and volcanic mountains.



Pulling off the main road onto a narrow gravel road, the dry "Mars on Earth" landscape began to take shape. Our "EDL" kicked up a huge clouds of dust as we made our way to the "landing" site. It truly felt as if we had landed on the floor of Gale Crater. Cinder cones of the San Francisco volcanic field were on the horizon, and we were in the middle of a huge red plain. It was easy to understand why NASA chose this as a training and proving ground for Mars missions, including testing rover operations and mobility and Desert RATS. The winds were strong and steady, easily more than 30 miles per hour, making it challenging to walk and hold onto our clipboards. Our charge, like MSL: "Find signs of habitability."



We split up into teams of 3 or 4, and everyone slowly walked onto the slabs of red sandstone and red dust. We scanned the ground at our feet looking for clues in the rock that ancient water was here. We searched for ripples and mud cracks preserved in the rock. And we found them! This landscape had indeed once been covered with water. The water, along with the minerals necessary to support life has been here. Like Curiosity, we were able to declare mission success!

  

 

























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ASU Mars Day 2.1 Reflections

Grand Canyon

"Let's go read the Book of Time!" says Jack Farmer ASU Geologist.

Reading the Book of Time

My entire neural net is responding to hyper stimulation. There is the immense, take your breath away, beauty that defines wonder and awe. Then your mind struggles for the language to attach to the view. Then of course, you can't help but begin to try to make sense of the landscape. Why the layers arranged as they did, the depth, the meanders and tributaries... The Celestron Cometron binoculars really came in handy for this field trip. Of course it's fun to look as far away and as deep as you can into the canyon, looking for the ant-like dots of hikers, but the real magic was being able to study the different layers. I was able to compare textures and fracture lines as if I were looking at a hand specimen with a loupe.

The Grand Canyon was a photo op if there ever was one. Kristin Fitzpatric remarked every time I stopped to take yet another photo, "You know, there's no such thing as a bad view." I was compelled to photograph the same scene several times because the light and mood kept changing as the Earth turned. Different features would become more or less prominent as the shadow and highlights shifted. Each layer, page, of the rock story spread as far as one could see. Canyon walls, cut grain by grain by the river over millions of years.

Zen Gigapan

It was possible to take it all in emotionally or cognitively. I gave it a valiant effort though! There is no language to effectively communicate the emotional response. At least non that I know. My photographs capture some sense of it. As does Dave Lavery's gigapan image from above the Bright Angel trail at the South Rim. (Don't tell NASA HQ, but he risked his life for the Martians to capture the image.)

As with all field trips, the time came to rendezvous with the rest of the Martians (as we had been dubbed by niw), board our spacecraft (motor coach) and head to our next field site.

...to be continued in Day 2.2

 

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ASUMars Day 1 Reflections

I-17 Roadside Geology & Old Indian Salt Mine
We traveled to a site near Camp Verde, AZ to get our first taste of Arizona/Mars Analog geology. For many of us, it was a literal taste. The primary feature of the site were the clay soils, mudstone, displacement growth crystals (desert roses or gypsum) and halites. The latter being the mineral of taste and the namesake of the site.

Following I-17 out of Tempe to Camp Verde, the road cuts revealed many of the rock layers and geologic history of the Basin & Range and transition to the Central Highlands.
We hiked into the site from the road side. The texture of the soil was soft and slippery, being primarily clay. Without a distinct crystal structure, the particles don't bind under foot as sand or other soils. Just under the grey-brown surface was a chalky white powder, the consistency and feel of cornstarch. This fine white dust coated everything.

The desert roses were nearly everywhere. Some sitting on the surface or poking up from just below. Others only a few centimeters below the surface and easily found by digging with a spoon. I collected several to photograph including one specimen that is a nearly perfect gypsum rhombohedral crystal about 2.5 cm on edge and about 0.5 cm thick.

At the bottom of a slope, there was a ravine littered with a wide variety of cobbles ranging from 20 cm to 40 cm. In one spot I found a grouping of 5 distinctly different rocks in one square meter. Among theses was an unusual grey granitic rock. I appeared to be basalt, fine grained, but less dense than one would expect. It also had several small pockets 2 mm to about a centimeter in diameter. The larger ones seemed to be gypsum, the smallest were a brown-green crystals slightly larger than the surrounding grain. I broke up a piece to bring back some specimens for further observation.

David Blake NASA Ames CheMin PI gave a demo of how MSL Curiosity analyzes the chemical-mineral content of rock samples on Mars. Using the percussive drill at the end of the robotic arm, about 10 cubic mm of rock dust

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Mars - Day 0

Sunday was about travel, gathering, introductions and anticipation. I have gathered in Phoenix with teachers from Arizona, Texas, Montana, Utah, Massachusetts, Mexico, California... with more to join the group on our official start. It's a diverse group of educators. Various stages of our carreers, varying degrees of experience, but everyone here to learn and network! That's my kind of group. One of the teachers shared her favorite quote with me:

"If at first you don't succeed. Don't try again. Identify the root cause of the failure first."

After sharing supper together, we all dispersed back to our hotel rooms to prepare for the trip. As I walked back to my hotel, I noticed Jupiter bright in the western sky. I scanned the sky. High in the southwest, the subject of our week, Mars, bright, yellow-orange. A bit further south, and nearly as high was Saturn, I went back to my room and grabbed the binoculars and the mini tripod I brought along. I found a small table in the hotel courtyard and pointed the binoculars to each of the three planets in turn for observation.

Celestron Cometron 12x70

This is the first time I've really used the new binoculars. They are lightweight for their size and have a very sharp, bright view. They are very comfortable to use. The tripod is essential for observing the planets. Hand held, any slight vibration induces an erratically dancing point of light, but the tripod mount greatly reduced the motion. Even with the street lights, I was able to just make out the rings of Saturn. With darker skies, who knows what I'll see.

This is also the "honey moon" season. Due to the opposition of the moon, it appears amber much larger than usual as it rises. Even though it is a couple days past full, the mood loomed large in the east. With the binoculars, sharp detail of the craters and mountains of the moon were visible.

 

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Preparing for Mars

I just wrapped up the school year, graduated my 27th class of students and closed up my classroom for the summer! Now it's time for a field trip to spend some time being a student myself! With the support of the Personal/Professional enrichment grant that I received from my school, I will be able embark on some space exploration adventures during 2014-15... The first begins tomorrow!
I am very fortunate to be one of 40 teachers from 14 different states and 2 countries chosen to participate in this summer's Mars Education Teachers Symposium at Arizona State University.
Tomorrow my adventure to Mars begins...

• Day 0: travel & site-seeing
• Day 1: Mars Space Flight Facility, School of Earth and Space Exploration - Arizona State University
• Day 2-4: geologic/astrobiological sites in northern AZ, including: Old Indian Salt Mine, Grand Canyon, Mars Rover Analog Field Sites, Meteor Crater, Bell Rock, Montezuma's Well & Montezuma's Castle, Sunset Crater, and Lowell Observatory
• Day 5: Mars Space Flight Facility, School of Earth and Space Exploration - Arizona State University
• Day 6: site-seeing & travel home

As if all this weren't enough, I also hope to visit Camelback Mountain/Echo Canyon. My Maths friends might have an idea why... This is the childhood home of one of my math heros, Julia Robinson who laid the groundwork for the proof to Hibert's Tenth. I want to play with some number patterns at the foot of a saguaro cactus. (Maybe one of my AZ Space Sisters can help me out with this one?)
Of course there is also the promise of those dark, clear AZ skies! I think that is the only regret of the trip, there is no room in the luggage for my telescope! But I do have those amazing Celestron Cometron 12x70 binoculars that are part of the "Where do you Celestron?" prize package!
Follow along as I embark on this adventure, it's going to be a lot of fun!

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Toys & Self-Image

On the surface, this post may seem a departure from the usual fare, though it is a direct result of my work in maths & sciences with my students.

Just in case there was any question of the importance of positive self image...



I arrived in my classroom one morning this week to have one of my fourth grade math students come bursting into the room, barely able to contain herself. Before I could even ask, "What's up?" She exclaimed, "You won't believe this. This is so amazing! You'll never guess what I found!" She proceeded to tell me a story about her shopping trip with her younger sister the night before. They has gone to the local big box toy store in search of a particular Barbie doll that her sister wanted. As my student helped her sister look for the object of their quest, she found an Astronaut Barbie.



"I was so excited, but Michael, she was the blonde Barbie, I couldn't get that!"
"I was curious and started looking through the racks. There had to be a black one!"

"And I found one, hidden amongst the others! The last one!"

"Look!"



I've been teaching for nearly 30 years now, and I've NEVER had a student tell me a story about buying a Barbie doll, let alone bring it to school to show me. What's more I don't think that I've ever been remotely excited to see a Barbie doll. But clearly, this was an entirely different situation. After enjoying her excitement and pride for a couple days, I asked her if she'd be interested in telling this story. She was, and after checking with her mother, we sat down to chat about why this was so important to her.



Why are you so excited about finding this doll?


"She looks like ME, want something looks like ME!"



So what was your reaction when you found the doll?


"I was jumping up and down! I could finally get astro Barbie! It was awesome, it's so beautiful!"



Why was it so special about this doll?


"It's not a blonde Barbie. She's black, like me. AND this one is an ASTRONAUT!"



What's the big deal?


"This job stood out from all the others - baker, babysitter, mermaid... This one goes to a different place, I don't have to stay on earth, I can dream bigger! I can be a Mars explorer!"



So what would you say to Mattel about what you want?


"We want dolls that actually look like us that do cool things. Pink baker, ok, but what about a green baker, why not different colored outfits. Mermaids are cool when your like five, but when you're ten... And why can't they not have gone through puberty... All of them have breasts, big breasts... Unrealistic!"

I wanted to share this story. I think it speaks volumes about what girls want and need. My student just wanted to be represented, to recognize herself in her toys. She wants the freedom to dream and imagine that anything is possible, to do great things. Clearly, this young lady is well on her way of doing just that!



In case you're wondering, she named her new doll Mae.