| Mars
Team Heads
to Arctic Volcano
CNN.com
Posted July 11, 2003
 OSLO,
Norway (AP) -- Researchers with NASA are looking to the land
of the midnight sun to study the red planet, heading to the
remote Svalbard Islands next month to test future Mars probes
in its barren, frozen climate.
The Arctic Svalbard archipelago shares several features of
Mars' environment, such as permafrost, volcanoes and hot springs,
the expedition's leader, Norwegian geologist Hans E.F. Amundsen,
told The Associated Press Monday.
"We are calling it a reconnaissance trip, and are taking
a broad range of researchers," said Amundsen, of the
University of Oslo. He said they will also test equipment
that could be used in future Mars probes.
The Svalbard Islands, about 500 kilometers (312 miles) north
of the Norwegian mainland are as far north as a person can
travel without having to charter a plane.
"The island group is an excellent stand-in for Mars
here on Earth," Knut I. Oexnevad of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory said in an interview published Monday by the Oslo
newspaper Aftenposten.
Oexnevad, a Norwegian, heads the laboratory's robot design
team which has used the islands to test a robot designed to
burrow within the ice of Mars to search for life.
Amundsen said 14 researchers will leave Longyearbyen, the
main settlement on the islands, Aug. 13 aboard the ship Polarsyssel.
The team features geologists, astrobiologists and chemists,
among others, and will spend about nine days in the archipelago.
One of the stops will be at a million-year-old volcanic mountain
called Sverrefjell.
Amundsen said the formation may resemble the "Mars Meteorite"
found in the Antarctic in 1996. NASA researchers have said
that magnetite crystals found on it were identical to crystals
formed by Earth-bound bacteria.
CNN.com
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