The experiments

Video Story

My project is to create, write and film a “video-novel” (text exploring the links and limits between the expression capacities of the novel and the video). The plot of the novel will stage scientists’ daily life, which would have been sent by the ESA (European Space Agency) on the Mars planet to lead some experiences. Beyond the creative approach supported by this work, the “video-novel”, once achieved, could provide an exceptional showcase for the Mars Society, the potential readers will discover, through the novel, the functioning of the base and get a few glimpses of the life on the site.

 Microbiology

Our project is to design an experiment to find out any bacterial life in rocks from the Utah desert, to grow it in culture, and to characterize it by a range of phenotypic and biochemical tests applicable in Martian conditions. We should be able to run these tests with very few equipment. Given that a drilling project is not conceivable, we should just focus on surface rocks from various places, such as an old river’s bed, to discover bacterial presence.

Streambed analysis

The previous crews from UCL (crew 127 and 136) began a project with the objective of establishing a model of the past flow for a dry stream as the conditions would be close to the ones encountered on Mars and could provide interesting observations. Encouraging results were found last year and publication on this subject has been made. This year, we plan to improve the results by working in three different directions: establishing the regime of the river, doing a sediment transport model and finally completing the result by making a statistical analysis instead of a deterministic study.

Astrophysics

This involves detecting celestial objects located outside the Milky Way to measure their redshift (i.e., the redshift of the object's frequency spectrum due to the expansion of the universe). To achieve this, the experimental setup involves coupling a CCD spectroscope to the MDRS telescope.

Using this setup, we will first be able to determine whether the object being observed is moving away from or toward us. This is a didactic method for illustrating the expansion of the universe. After that, we will be able to make more precise measurements of the spectra of objects moving away from us to determine their redshifts by comparing the spectra obtained with theoretical spectra. With these measurements, we will be able to determine the velocity and therefore the distance-luminosity (a measure of distance) between Earth and the object studied using Hubble's law.

 Geophysics

We know for sure that Mars had a magnetic field: satellites have detected a residual field induced by the rocks of its crust. Therefore, we wish to carry out an experiment about the magnetic properties of rocks in the Utah desert. The goal would be to determine as much as possible about the magnetic field that existed back when the rock was formed.

Communication signal mapping

The experiment consists in detecting galaxies out of the milky way to measure their spectral redshift in Mars analog conditions. To do that, we will couple a spectroscope CCD to the telescope of the MDRS. Thanks to this, we will be able to determine if the observed objects are moving away or closer. It is a didactic method to illustrate the expansion of the Universe. Then we will make more precise measures of the spectrum of objects moving away to determine their red shift. With these measures, we will be able to determine the speed and then the distance-luminosity of the object thanks to the Hubble law.