Today, I joined the team that was performing an experiment called a Soil Transect. Here is what that is. We gathered samples of soil (small baggies of dirt) from seven sites across the Mojave Desert. We drove in vans for about 400 miles in order to gather the samples. We got the soil from places that the scientists had already selected based on the average rainfall in each region.
The scientists are now going to study the soil samples to look for what is living in the dirt. They are going to find out how many kinds of microscopic life forms (microbes), and how many of each, are in the soil. Then the scientists want to compare soil microbes from the 7 different sites to see if there is a pattern they can find. The techniques they are using are also being studied to see if this could be done by robots on Mars.
While we were in the field, driving all across the Mojave Desert, we also saw may different ways that people in California are making electricity without burning fuels. NASA is also always looking for alternative energy sources so Dan and I spent some time taking pictures and researching these programs. If you want to know what we learned, then I will direct you to look at Dan’s blog at http://www.nasamojave.blogspot.com/There you will find some of what we learned.
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