Blog
28 July 2007 - Completing the Drill Hill GPR Survey
We fell short of completing the Drill Hill survey on July 27th. Determined to complete the job we headed back on Saturday morning with our remaining, smaller, team. While we were getting ourselves organized to head out (it always took a while to get everyone ready to get out for the day), I took an ATV up to the runway to gas it up and took this self portrait at the fuel drum.![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090117110001im_/http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/projects/haughton_field/images/fuelingATV.320.jpg)
We finished mapping the hill in the afternoon. K10 Black drove about 3 km to finish the North/South transects on the South side of the hill. It felt good to complete the main objective of executing the full set of coverage plans for Drill Hill. Here are screenshots of Drill Hill coverage pans and the actual rover runs for the four days that it took to complete the coverage:
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090117110001im_/http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/projects/haughton_field/images/DrillHillPlans.320.jpg)
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090117110001im_/http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/projects/haughton_field/images/DrillHillAll.320.jpg)
To completely cover the hill over four days of operations, K10 Black drove a little more than 20 kilometers. This is an average of over 5 km of traverse per day, and all of this was with a minimum of human intervention. The hill itself is about 700 by 800 meters. This is why we consider this type of survey operation to be dense coverage. A rover passing through Drill Hill would drive less than a kilometer and go on to something else, but this kind of survey operation takes many kilometers of driving and lots of data collection in order to thoroughly cover and characterize a site.
At the end of the day we packed up the rover and comms gear in the Humvee and headed back to camp for a late lunch. Some of the EVA Walkback crew were planning to have a late lunch, so we coordinated with them to arrive past lunchtime. We had a slow afternoon and got a start on packing by organizing our work area in the Core.
Later that evening we went back to Drill Hill to retrieve the rover and the Humvee. Pascal and Jesse came along to drive the Humvee and the Mule. Unfortunately I did not take pictures of the caravan driving back to base camp. It was quite a sight.
Archive
27 July 2007 - K10 Black return to Drill Hill
+ Read 27 July 2007 - K10 Black return to Drill Hill
26 July 2007 - K10 Red simulates dark crater descent
+ Read 26 July 2007 - K10 Red simulates dark crater descent
25 July 2007 - Remote Ops at NASA Ames
+ Read 25 July 2007 - Remote Ops at NASA Ames
24 July 2007 - Two rovers, two locations
+ Read 24 July 2007 - Two rovers, two locations
23 July 2007 - Drill Hill Mapping
+ Read 23 July 2007 - Drill Hill Mapping
20 July 2007 - Live Coverage and Experiments with JSC Remote Ops
+ Read 20 July 2007 - Live Coverage and Experiments with JSC Remote Ops
18 July 2007 - Two rovers conduct kilometer long surveys
+ Read 18 July 2007 - Two rovers conduct kilometer long surveys
16 July 2007 - K10 Black Shakedown Test
+ Read 16 July 2007 - K10 Black Shakedown Test
15 July 2007 - K10 Red Shakedown Test
+ Read 15 July 2007 - K10 Red Shakedown Test
14 July 2007 - The rest of the team arrives
+ Read 14 July 2007 - The rest of the team arrives
13 July 2007 - K10 Red completes checkout
+ Read 13 July 2007 - K10 Red completes checkout
12 July 2007 - Team arrives on Devon Island
+ Read 12 July 2007 - Team arrives on Devon Island