Jenn Biddle - Science backroom

I’m so excited to be officially joining the PLRP team this year as part of the science team. I got excited about astrobiology in graduate school and after my PhD, was a NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoctoral fellow. When I became a professor, I kept looking for ways to stay involved in NASA and astrobiology science. I collaborate with the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Penn State University and now am part of the PLRP team!

I typically do deep sea research, so the PLRP approach of using manned submarines is not too unusual to me. What is unusual is that we’re taking an analog mission approach to the science and exploration – complete with a mobile mission command center. I’ve been really impressed with the amount of infrastructure that the team has had to create in order to do their work, including setting up wifi in remote places and running video feeds across miles. Typically my research done on a ship has communications already on it – we just hop on and do science. Coming to a remote (and beautiful!) site in British Columbia certainly presents challenges.

Today I got my full immersion into PLRP science and headed up the science backroom team for the third dive in Kelly Lake. One disadvantage of a single manned sub is that only one person is seeing and observing things in real time. Maybe they can take a video, but the rest of us might wait hours to see it. That means decisions are slowed and science might be impeded. So this year the team designed a way to have a sub tethered to a cable, sending video feeds to the surface – and then the coms team has been able to shoot video back to the mobile mission command center. What this means is that many of us scientists can sit in comfort and see and hear what the pilot of the sub is observing. That way we can confer on what we are seeing immediately, add extra sets of eyes to a busy pilot and give advice or opinions on what is happening. Really what we did was sit back and go “Cool!” when a lovely microbialite would pop up on the screen.

We additionally got a true mission-feel when we started doing delayed communications. If an astronaut is off of the Earth, it takes a while to talk to them! So even though our sub pilot was only a few kilometers away, we gave ourselves a delay to see how things would go. Not surprisingly, it did seem easier – doesn’t your job go better when your “boss” stops interrupting you? But we’ll see how well it works when we actually want samples. Maybe 10 brains are better than one – maybe not! It’s part of this week’s experiments. My final experiments won’t be done for a while. We are collecting samples from Pavilion and Kelly Lakes to continue to describe the microbial communities that are in the microbialites. My group is specifically interested in the phototrophic (light-harvesting) communities, who we expect are driving the distinct shapes we see in these structures. Our work is in progress, so now updates yet – but watch for later updates as we start to unravel the mysteries of these beautiful and mysterious microbialites!

Written By: Jennifer Biddle

Inside the MMCC

Inside the MMCC

Bill keeping - comunications, MMCC

Darlene Lim (PI) - Inside the MMCC - there are million ideas going on inside her head right now

Just down the canyon and a little to the side, from Pavilion Lake to Kelly Lake – Welcome! Another year has flown by and I find myself heading east again to see some of the crew that I have had the pleasure to kick out of the kitchen over the past 5 years, and meet some new friends as well. This year I do not have a blue Volkswagon Vanagon or orange Westfalia jammed to the roof with food for the team. I am somewhat pleased with not having to drag a weighed down VW on a long road trip and am impressed with the minimal equipment necessary for my new position as the EPO coordinator. In less than 24 hours, simply myself and my mac-apple-mac laptop (and road bike of course) will step off the plane and into the 2011 field season.

When Darlene Lim offered me the EPO position my first instinct was “ I do sport nutrition, not twitter – no thanks.” Always up for the learning opportunities of a new challenge I accepted the position and have been mostly thrilled ever since.  Now I can’t wait to continue to share the amazing science and exploration activities of 2011 with you. This field season will be full of great discoveries, and will highlight some of the best space science and exploration activities that happen on Earth!

Not only have we expanded to a new location and new community, but we welcome some talented new folks: The JSC Timeliners/Robotics group, Liza Coe from NASA-Ames and Sean Maday from Google.Check their bio’s out here.

Jessica Parsons from JSC, Raffy Pendery from Studio98 and I will be working hard to keep you updated from the field – with blogs like this one, tweets, facebook posts, photos and videos from the team’s daily science and exploration activities. We welcome questions about our research through any of these channels, and will endeavor to answer questions from you as soon as we can! You can also submit questions to Henry Bortman through Astrobiology Magazine.

Stay tuned for some great media coverage by BC Magazine, Discovery’s Daily Planet Series, New York Times, Earth Periodical and much more. Thanks for your interest in our project, and welcome back to the Pavilion Lake Research Project at Kelly Lake.

Once I land in field camp I will update on the DeepWorker arrival, barge set up and the first DW flight of 2011. Keep checking in.

When Dana Lis, our PLRP Education and Public Outreach coordinator, asked me to write a blog about how I was feeling, the first word that popped into my mind was – EXCITED! After months of planning, testing and organizing we are finally ready to start our adventure, and I am so looking forward to it all.

We now have nearly 200 participants on the PLRP team, and each year thousands of work hours go into preparing for our DeepWorker Science and Exploration (DSE) field deployment. Planning starts pretty much as soon as we end the prior year’s field program. This year’s deployment at Kelly Lake is no exception.

What’s in store is our most ambitious and operationally complex field program yet.

Throughout this coming week’s activities, we will continue our scientific exploration of microbialite rich lakes using such exploration tools as DeepWorker single-person submersibles and SCUBA diving. This research builds upon the work we have been conducting at Pavilion Lake, which is about an hour’s drive away. However, the team’s research doesn’t stop there. Our DSE program requires the integration of scientific methods, and operational and technological advancements. From these real field science activities, NASA scientists are learning about what it takes to conduct safe, productive and discovery-based science in extreme environments. It is this knowledge that will form the basis of future exploration concepts for human research voyages to such destinations as Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Mars. With the end of the Shuttle program, this and other analog programs, such as Desert RATS and NEEMO, truly becomes NASA’s bridge to future space flight.

The entire PLRP is personal passion, so it is not surprising that I am extremely excited to get our 2011 field program underway.  But beyond the research, I’m excited to see the incredible scientists, engineers, operations experts, astronauts, and teachers who have become part of the PLRP family.  I’m thrilled to meet new colleagues who join us for the first time this year, and to thank the Clinton and Kelly Lake community for all of the support and assistance that they have already provided to the PLRP.

I remember when I was a kid that if something got me really excited I would jump up and down with joy.  Well, you know how it is, you kinda have to park that behavior through Junior high and high school, so I did.  But I find myself rekindling that jumping behavior these days each time I hear about some new finding or technical development or outreach opportunity that the PLRP team members come up with.  Happily, my NASA colleagues seem ok with me bouncing up and down periodically.  It is a joy, it is a privilege, to be part of the PLRP family.  And I hope that everyone reading our blogs will feel like they are part of the adventure too. 

A while ago, Donnie Reid said something to me that went something like this: “When there’s a camp cook, that’s when you’ve got a real field camp on your hands”. He said that to me as we cheerfully prepared a modest dinner of salad and spaghetti for a hungry band of about 8 people. He was volunteering his diving skills to our research efforts, and me, I had just started at NASA Ames and was keenly exploring my new research site of Pavilion Lake. That was August 2004.

August 2004. Early days of the project

Welcome to July 2009 – and guess what? We have a camp cook. Her name is Dana. And she now prepares a mean pasta dinner for a thriving (and still hungry) camp that has grown to almost 60 characters from all walks of life and from all over the world. Oh, and as for Donnie, well he is now the PLRP Logistics and Operations Manager and is in charge of organizing the activities of everyone from the astronauts to yep, the camp cook. I think he knew this was coming when he said what he said to me some years ago.

August 2005. A few more faces, but still no camp cook

August 2006. New graduate students and a camp cook join the team.

When I think back, I’m struck by the fact that the project has seen more faces come than go, and as a consequence, we’ve grown. Folks keep coming back, and bringing more folks with them. It’s great, because with each passing year the PLRP family gets larger. One reason for this phenomenon is that the lake is a scientific goldmine. As we answer the first round of questions we came to the lake to research, so many new, interesting questions surface for us to ponder. And as we’ve set out to answer questions, we’ve had the chance to select the best technologies, methodologies and protocols to help us accomplish our science objectives. And what we’ve learnt isn’t just relevant to us at Pavilion Lake, but also has bearing on how humans will conduct science on the Moon, Mars and beyond. And with this natural procession of scientific research has come the development of a new crop of researchers. Allyson Brady, Rebekah Shepard, Alex Forrest, Ben Cowie, Margarita Marinova, Weston Pike, Olivia Chan, and Carol Turse are all graduate students who joined the project early on and who are all now either completed or on the cusp of completing their degrees. Through their work at Pavilion Lake, we’ve learnt so much about the physical, chemical and biological processes that govern this remarkable environment. And now we are in the process of shepherding in a new crop of students to evolve their research and tackle the new questions ahead of us. To me, all this is the essence of the scientific endeavor – gain knowledge, give knowledge, and grow knowledge.

August 2007. Post-SCUBA dive debrief with the growing PLRP team.

This year we did 40 submersible flights in 10 days of operations. We cycled 9 scientist pilots (SPs) through a variety of rigorous sub flight plans that included contour mapping, detailed imaging, basin transects and deep sample collection activities. We gathered ground-breaking quantitative data to measure the efficiency, productivity, and discovery mindedness of each SP. We implemented a new Surface Data System (SDS) and communications plan that allowed us to view sub tracks and science notes in real time, and get voices from the deep up to the shore and into our Mobile Mission Control Center, or “The Hab[itat]“, much to the delight of an eagerly awaiting Science Backroom Team (SBT). We had underwater fluorometer experiments, water monitoring, and virology surveys taking place at the same time as the sub ops, as well as a very busy Education and Public Outreach schedule. Visitors came, visitors went, and there were a lot of boat trips to carry out everything we had to do to complete the science goals and objectives we set for the team and then some! It all got accomplished and happily, everyone made it home safely. Whew.

July 2008. First year of DeepWorker sub operations. Dana, our camp cook and raison d’etre, pictured bottom row, three from the left.

As a final note to all those who have been following our field season blogs, we’re planning on keeping our updates coming to you throughout the year, so definitely stay tuned. But for now, I just wanted to say thanks to all those who have been reading our entries, and by extension supporting our research efforts through the July 2009 field season. I’m looking forward to seeing the PLRP family again in 2010 and to meeting the new faces who will help to grow and evolve the project. Which leaves me to wonder what Donnie and Dana would have to say about having two camp cooks? Ah, but that’s a story for another time…

So long for now,

Darlene

July 2009. The 2009 PLRP family photo.