MDRS Crew 76
Feb. 1, 2009 - Feb. 14, 2009
Daily Crew Reports

Name	Speciality
Vladimir Pletser	Commander
Euan Monaghan	Executive Officer / Crew Engineer
Stefan Peters	Crew Scientist
Anouk Borst	Crew Scientist
Danielle Wills	Crew Scientist
Jeffrey Hendrikse	Crew Engineer

Vladimir Pletser	Vladimir Pletser earned the Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Physics degrees from the University of Louvain, Belgium. He is working since 1985 at the European Space Research and Technology Centre of the European Space Agency (ESA). He is in charge of developing scientific instrumentation for microgravity research in fluid physics. He had several instruments that flew on Spacelab missions in the nineties. The instrument on which he works actually, the PCDF for protein crystallisation research, will fly on board the European Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station in mid-February 2009. He is also responsible at ESA for the aircraft parabolic flight microgravity research programme and he logged 5166 parabolas, representing more than 28h in weightlessness, equivalent to more than 19 Earth orbits, during which he participated in several hundred experiments in physical and life sciences. Astronaut Candidate for Belgium since 1991, he was Payload Specialist candidate for several Spacelab missions, including Spacelab LMS for which he spent two months in training at NASA-JSC, Houston, in 1995. He participated in 2001 in the second rotation (crew 2) at the newly deployed FMARS on Devon Island with a geophysics seismic experiment to search for subsurface water. In 2002, he was a core crew member on the fifth rotation at MDRS (crew 5) with another experiment on psychological aspects of growing vegetables on a Mars mission. He will serve as Commander of the EuroGeoMars crew 76.
Euan Monaghan	Euan Monaghan is the Engineer/XO for crew 76. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics with Space Science and Systems from the University of Kent in Canterbury, and is currently studying for a Master's in Astronautics and Space Engineering at the University of Cranfield. His research interests are wide ranging, but a multi-disciplinary aspect is common to them all. Last summer he completed a three-month stagiaire period at the ESA's ESTEC facility in The Netherlands, where he split his time between a two main projects based in the field of astrobiology. Also while in The Netherlands, he took part in the final pre-launch test phase of the ISS-bound EXPOSE-R/Organics experiment at the Astrobiology Group of the University of Leiden. Euan is the co-editor and designer of the journal of the International Association of Physics Students. He fences épée, and was born in a little town in the north-west of England famous for making the high energy food that explorers take when climbing tall mountains. He suspects this fact might in some way be important.
Stefan Peters	Driven by the inspiration to study our home planet, Stefan Peters successfully completed a Bachelor degree in geology at the VU U niversity of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Well trained by courses that involve sedimentology, geochemistry, geophysics, geobiology, hydrology, structural geology and remote sensing, he was driven to apply his knowledge to other planets than the Earth, and finished his degree by a thesis on the coupling of impacts and volcanism on the Moon. His research was performed at ESA / ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, and involved the mapping of lunar surface structures (e.g. different faults, crater types) and comparison of mineralogy in different regio ns from multispectral data. The results were presented at several conferences (e.g. EPSC, NPP, EGU, NLSC, and COSPAR). Subsequently, Stefan started a MSc in solid Earth geology at the VU of Amsterdam. Fallen for the dynamics, evolution, and chemistry of the Moon, this brought him again to ESA / ESTEC, where he is currently studying the flexure and isostasy of lunar mascons. Stefan emphasizes that he is not ready yet in planetary science, nor that planetary science seems to be ready with him. Hence he aims starting a PhD related to Lunar or Martia n geology shortly after finishing his degree.
Anouk Bosrt	Anouk Borst is a Bachelor student in geology at the Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, VU University in Amsterdam. 21 years old, born and raised in a small town in the typical Dutch countryside, she now lives together with five friends in Amsterdam and wishes to travel the world like most people of her age. During her studies she performed field courses in structural geology, petrology, sedimentology and geomorphology throughout Holland, France, Germany, Belgium and her favourite: Spain. She was introduced and captured by the stimulating and interesting world of space and planetary sciences during a 6 month internship at ESA/ESTEC, where she analyzed the geology and mineralogy on the largest Lunar impact crater located on the far side using datasets from Lunar missions as Clementine and SMART-1. She presented her work at several European conferences and is currently finishing the thesis, aiming to obtain her Bachelor degree in the next few months. Anouk is a happy and active member of the Earth Scientists study association at the VU, organizing and taking part in many events, parties and field trips in Amsterdam or abroad. While she can, she loves to hang out with her friends in the city during the week and regularly visits her parents in the weekend. As a true geologist it is difficult not to get excited about going out in the field, wherefore she was absolutely delighted with the opportunity to visit Mars on Earth. After exploring the Martian geology in MDRS crew 76 Anouk will continue her studies for the Master degree Solid Earth at the VU in Amsterdam, where she hopes to learn and discover more about our beautiful planet Earth and its neighbours in orbit.
Danielle Wills	Danielle Wills is passionate about all aspects of space research, from exploring the exotic surfaces of our nearest planetary neighbours, to venturing far out at high redshift to discover the secrets of the early universe. Aside from research, she enjoys looking into philosophical issues related to space and physics. In her studies, she has combined these two aspects by taking a joint honours program in Physics and Philosophy. She is currently in the final stages of her masters degree, and will begin a PhD soon after. For her PhD, she plans to research some aspect of theoretical cosmology, possibly relating to large scale structure or dark energy. Danielle is South African, and has lived in the UK for eight years. She moved abroad in order to travel and study. She has been lucky enough to have had some amazing backpacking experiences around the world, some highlights include trekking to Mt. Everest Base Camp and diving near the islands off the coast of Thailand. Danielle is a huge animal lover and vegetarian. Another key interest of hers is art - something she envisages as playing a large role in her professional future, alongside research. She has worked on various extracurricular projects in planetary science and astrobiology over the course of her degree, and spent last summer working as a trainee at ESA/ESTEC in the Netherlands. During that traineeship, she worked on selecting landing sites of astrobiological interest for Mars landers and sample return missions, and also investigated some aspects of lunar astrobiology. As a side project, she helped with the preparation for EXPOSE-R/Organics, an astrochemistry/astrobiology experiment that is currently on board the International Space Station. She also worked in the lab on testing the stability of halophilic archaea under simulated Martian conditions. Her role for MDRS crew 76 is the running of the biology experiments. Her main focus is the extraction of DNA from soil samples collected from various locations in the MDRS region, and conducting PCR analysis to see what sort of little creatures are hardy enough to thrive in these dry desert conditions. Being more of an astrophysicist by trade, she is most excited to get her hands dirty in this biology experiment! She hopes to continue with some form of astrobiology research throughout her career, alongside cosmology and extragalactic astrophysics.
Jeffrey Hendrikse	Jeffrey Hendrikse started his space career thirteen years ago in 1995 in the microgravity section of ESA ESTEC in the Netherlands as a stagier working on space based freezers. Before he finished his degree in applied physics, he took the opportunity at ESTEC to work on a real satellite project called TEAMSAT which was designed developed, built, prepared for launch in Kourou, launched on the Ariane 502 in 1 years time frame and operated in space for 4 days.. After which he had a small internet company and finished his degree in the optics department of the University of Delft on dual polygon laser scanning techniques for retinal scanning displays and wrote a thesis on a novel propellantless propulsion system. With his degree he return to ESTEC to the microgravity section as a young graduate trainee to develop a prototype virtual reality system for neural sensory feedback to test the balance reflexes of astronauts in microgravity environment. Once completed he continued to develop more of his academic side as a research assistant in the nuclear physics department of the University of Delft on 2 dimensional Scintillating Gas Electron Multiplier detectors for radiation therapy. Here he had the opportunity to perform several measurement campaigns on a cyclotron at KVI in Groningen, The Netherlands. After 2.5 years his passion of Physics and space combined took him at the end of 2005 to grab the opportunity to work on the electrical and environmental test campaign of ESA's Autonomous Transfer Vehicle (ATV), Europe's first unmanned spacecraft to dock with the space station. When ATV left for its launch phase in Kourou Jeffrey started on Herschel, a cryogenically cooled far infrared space telescope with a 3.5 meter dish. Within the Herschel team he became a key member preparing test, software, performing system analyses, recoveries and acting Test conductor. Jeffrey is now schedule to leave for Kourou on the 9th of February to take an active role in the launch campaign of Herschel. But before he leaves he is providing a full week of technical, scientific support and work on a small rover at ESA's MDRS campaign in the Utah Desert.

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