Alaska to Mars: A CRREL connection

24 Jul 2006 -- HANOVER, N.H. -- When the Phoenix Mars Lander mission lands on the red planet in the summer of 2008, a team of researchers at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), academic experts and teachers will be ready to compare Mars' permafrost with that found on Earth.

The ERDC is the premier research and development facility for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with more than 2,000 employees, $1.2 billion in facilities, and an annual research program of $700 million. It conducts research in both military and civil works mission areas for the DoD and the nation.

Those involved in this unique joint research project are already training for the mission, with some on-site work in Fairbanks, Alaska with researchers Dr. Tom Douglas and Dr. Jerry Johnson at ERDC's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL).

The University of Arizona is heading up the MARSFEST, in which 20 middle and high school teachers serve as educational specialists and teacher liaisons for the NASA Mars lander mission. As part of the training, the teachers participated in a weeklong field experience headed by the CRREL duo of Douglas and Johnson.

"The CRREL events included a permafrost tunnel tour with Maj. Rachow, Jerry Johnson and me. Then I lead a day in the soil and water chemistry lab measuring pH, specific conductance and anion concentrations of soil, water and ice wedge waters the teachers collected from the tunnel. I also co-led a day long field trip to the Gulkana glacier on Friday and Saturday as a final wrap up. It was a long but engaging week with some seriously contagious curiosity from all the teachers," Douglas said. The teachers' focus is to learn about polar processes and climate change on both Earth and Mars, as well as analyze soil and ice samples from the north polar region of Mars with those collected on Earth.

Douglas believes the program could bring benefits back to ERDC. "Jerry Johnson and I are hoping that some of the connections made during a separate sample collection at the permafrost tunnel leads to some future collaboration on Martian permafrost and frozen soils."

The Mars Phoenix Lander is scheduled to blast off next summer and land on Mars in 2008. It will land 65 degrees north, the same approximate location on Earth where Fairbanks is located.