Science Report

April 4, 2008

Jan Gruber



Science Report:Biochemistry

Today we did a real in-sim sterile sample collection mission taking
biological rock surface samples at five different locations. A
photographer (Rory – see today’s photos) came along and took pictures –
he also ended up helping us with some of the steps that turned out to
be very difficult in the EVA suits. I think he did get some good
pictures and we did get some real samples – hopefully without
contaminating them with our very earthly bacteria.

Tomorrow we are going to practice coring for samples of halophiles
using the corer and related equipment. I will also make some high salt
agar plates for halophile culturing and sterilize our equipment for
sampling. After that we are up and running for sample collection.
Everybody is looking forward to going out to take real samples and we
all hope to maybe discover something exciting – this is what it is
about after all.

You read it first here! – Jan out