AMASE - day 15 - Farewell Ny-Ålesund

...

Svalbard

Longyearbyen

AMASE - Day 14 - Farewell "party"

Last night, so AMASE hosted a party for AMASERs and locals in an old house at the shore. It was a bit a broken-up event, since half of the people were still running around either packing their own stuff or helping others, but in between the running around the light led to some nice pictures.

Party house

Eckhard and Jean-Luc

Antonio

Jen

Keyong

Dave

Long shadows

Longer shadows

The fjord

AMASE - Day 14 - One more hike

Since all our stuff was packed and the weather was great, Jen, Kjell-Ove and I decided to go for one more hike in the direction of the blue glacier I've been staring at for the past two weeks. We made a to about a third of the way there, but still close enough to hear the rumble of parts breaking off.

AMASE - Day 13 - Last lab day

I just ran the last samples and unfortunately had to decleare the second oven dead as well. But, it only gave up in the last 100 °C of the heating profile, so all in all the oven worked perfectly fine for the duration of the full AMASE and I got all the results I needed. Happy me and a million thanks to Marvin, Vince, Ray and Eric, who put this oven together December 2009 and made it run all the way through the ILSO-ISRU (Hawaii) campaing and AMASE! Can't say too much about the results, yet, since they will be published at some point. 

Time to clean and p up and  VAPoR for the way back to Goddard. 

Some more random pics.

Geologist, doing his geologist thing:

Polar bear warning...

Local art work

Polar fox (thanks, Carole for the picture)

AMASE - Day 12 - Swimming with icebergs

After two days running samples in the lab, with a still very happily running oven and everything else still working as well, some of us got the heebie-beebies and needed to get out again. Since we didn't have too much time, we decided to go for the quick ultracold polar experience...  a swim in the fjord.

Some of us were Tor the Rock Crusher, Mads the pilot and myself. Kjell-Ove joined us for safety and the MOMA team (Carole and Eckhard) to check if we were not just bluffing. Well. we weren't so here's the proof. I went first and just wend under and ran back, then Mads decided to actually climed the iceberg and Tor to kiss the next one.

FYI, water temperature ~0.5-1 °C (32-33 °F)