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Astrobiology

Mars, Everest, and Tricorders

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 12, 2012
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Ocean Optics Spectrometers Land Safely on Mars
“Three Ocean Optics instruments have completed their eight month journey to Mars to study soil composition as part of the ChemCam mission. The company’s modular Jaz spectrometer scaled Mt. Everest with a team that included NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski to measure solar irradiance at extreme altitude.”
Using a Tricorder on Mount Everest
“If you’ve ever seen a Starfleet away team beaming down to a new planet, you know that the first thing they do is whip out their tricorder and scan everything. Many of NASA’s astrobiologists want one. Well, Scott and I had one at Everest.”
Keith’s note: I carried this cool device up to Everest Base Camp and then Scott carried it up the mountain. Its not unusual for people to trek into Everest with the latest high tech gear on display but every time I pulled this thing out people stopped to watch me go through my procedure. I took this promo photo of Scott using the Jaz unit while we were standing next to our tents at Everest Base Camp. An instant later we heard a loud noise coming from the icefall. I quickly switched my camera from still to video and shot this video since I was literally pointed at the exact right spot already. This was one of the largest avalanches in recent seasons.
Had I not been taking the PR shot of Scott and the Jaz unit I’d have missed most of this avalanche. (More details in comments below). Now I see that our good friends at Ocean Optics have hardware on Mars. How cool – especially since I had 4 little Moon rocks in my chest pocket when I shot these pics and video – and our Moon rocks are now on the ISS.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

6 responses to “Mars, Everest, and Tricorders”

  1. James Lundblad says:
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    Can’t wait for the Science to start. No press conferences scheduled for this week? I wonder will they have a daily update via ustream/youtube?

  2. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Keith,

    We’ve all seen avalanches in movies and documentaries, even seen them close up. But I’m sure that can’t compare to experiencing the real thing. I can try to imagine myself where you were, filming this for real, but I can’t envision how it must feel. I suspect I might be standing there wondering: Gee, should I maybe start running? Which way? Is here any point in running? while this huge mass comes irresistibly downward.

    It must have been an incredible experience. Can you recall how you felt, what you were thinking?

    Steve

    • kcowing says:
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      As you can hear on the audio we were immediately concerned as to who might be under the avalanche at the time. We were less than a mile away so there was a loud noise, a blast of cold air, and then pulverized ice descended upon us a few minutes later.  The scale is just immense so your mind has some problems grasping it even after you have been there for a while.  A few days later there was another one of similar size and, for about 10-20 minutes I was absolutely certain Scott was in the middle of it. As it happened he was above it with his sherpa Danuru, but his friend Rejean was in the middle of it and only managed to survive due to the quick thinking of his sherpa as they both dove behind a block of ice. In both cases, within moments, all climbing teams stopped what they were doing and went instantly into rescue mode. This is what I wrote after the second large avalanche (with video)

      That said, you hear dozens of avalanches around you 24 hours a way. You can soon tell exactly how big they are by the sound and whether there is a risk to climbers. 

      Eventually you even learn to sleep through them.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Keith,

        Thanks very much for taking the time to share that.  For those of us who will never be able to attempt climbing mountains, having first-hand experiences like that related to us is worth more than any bar of gold or Hollywood movie.

        Thanks,

        Steve

  3. Stuart J. Gray says:
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    I proposed one of these very spectrometers for the Stardust mission at Lockheed in 1997 when there was a slight risk that the CIDA Instrument might not be ready in time.  Back then they had no space flight heritage, but they have some now!
    At the time they were about the size of a cellphone. ( 1997 cellphone 😉