Mars project brings space program to Nunavut youth

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In July, a group of young people from Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord got a chance to travel to Mars-or at least the next best thing.

They travelled to Devon Island, a 45-minute plane ride northeast of Resolute Bay, to take part in the 2002 field season of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, or FMARS. Organized by the Mars Society, FMARS is a simulated mission to Mars.

"What this is, this is a program to learn how to explore Mars by practicing it on earth in the most Mars-like environments available," explained Dr. Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, and a member of this summer's FMARS crew.

"Devon Island is a polar desert with a meteor crater in it that has created all kinds of geological phenomenon that are similar to what people believe exist on Mars. And in fact, NASA scientists have been exploring the place for about five years now in order to learn about Mars through geological comparisons.

"And so what we decided to do, the Mars Society-which is an international non-profit organization committed to promoting Mars exploration to both public and private means-what we decided to do for our first project is establish a simulated human Mars base on Devon so we could attempt to explore it in the same style and under many of the same constraints as you would be facing if you were trying to do it on Mars."

To make it a true Mars simulation, crew worked under similar conditions as they would expect to experience on Mars, including having to wear space suits for all excursions outside of the FMARS habitat.

While some of the situations this year's crew had to face on Devon Island weren't exactly what an exploration team would expect to face on Mars, most provided a close approximation to what the red planet would have to offer.

"We don't expect to see polar bears on Mars," Zubrin said. "And some of the things that happen on Devon are not exactly what you'd expect on Mars, but they have a Martian analogue. For example, you take a snowstorm. We don't expect in general, snow storms on Mars. But we do expect dust storms on Mars. And they have similar effects on visibility. What if you're out in an EVA (Extravehicular Activity) that is, you're out in your space suit, walking around, or perhaps even at some significant distance, on Mars, from the base, and a dust storm comes and you can't see anything.

"A snowstorm on Devon, or even thick fog or rain, greatly impairs the visibility of someone wearing one of these spacesuit helmets. So you've got to deal with that. And on Devon Island, we have something that we also don't expect on Mars, which is quick mud, which can get vehicles trapped. And you're not going to have that on Mars because it's too dry, but you can have dust beds that have similar effects."

The FMARS station on Devon Island was built in the summer of 2000, thanks in great part to the efforts of local Inuit people, who stepped in when the project's original crew abandoned the job.

"Inuit people played a major role in building the station," Zubrin explained. "What happened was we had to bring the materials in by paradrop, the U.S. Marine Corps contracted to do it.

"And there were seven paradrops, and the first six went OK, in that the stuff got to the ground without breaking, though it did land in general far from the construction site. But then the last paradrop was a disaster. The payload separated from the parachute several hundred feet above the ground, so it hit the ground at several hundred miles an hour, destroying the material, and in particular the crane needed to build the habitat was destroyed. And so, without the crane, the paid construction crew that we brought up from lower Canada said they couldn't build it, and they walked off, and we were left to put together a new team that was a mixture of scientists and Inuit to build the habitat."

The involvement of Inuit didn't end with the construction of the habitat, Zubrin added, but continued both during last summer's seres of short crew rotations at the station, and for this year's three-week long crew rotation.

One Inuit person, a college student from Pond Inlet, was a member of one of the station crews, while other people have helped out with the project in various capacities.

"For example, when you send a team out on an excursion, and they're all wearing these space suits, they have insufficient situational awareness to be faced with polar bears. So we would generally have an Inuit follow the team to keep an eye out, and that person would be a hunter with a rifle. Obviously they're the best people for that job anyway," Zubrin said.

Aziz Kheraj, the mayor of Resolute Bay, played a big role in getting the crew and supplies together to help build the FMARS habitat. He sees the most positive thing about the Devon Island location of the project as being the impact it is having on local youth.

"Every year we have five, six go over and spend time, and people from Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord also go over and work there and help and learn things," he said.

"In many ways it enhanced the community because a lot of students go there and spend the summer with different scientists and different people who specialize in the field, with space suits and robots and everything else. So it has definitely enlightened the younger minds of the town."

That local involvement will likely continue, as Zubrin expects crews will return to FMARS each summer for several more years.

In general, the reaction to the FMARS project from the local community has been "quite positive", Zubrin said, "ranging from people who are simply happy that we're passing through and giving business to people in Resolute Bay, to people who are generally enthusiastic about the fact that they're having a part in opening up the solar system to humanity."