California, Here I Come

Today, we finally went WEST. If you are checking your latitude and longitude coordinates, we started in Warsaw, Indiana. We drove to Indianapolis and boarded an airplane. We flew Phoenix, AZ where we quickly changed planes and then continued on to Los Angeles, CA. Tonight we will be sleeping in a hotel before we drive to the research station tomorrow. Also, we met up with another friend, Dan Loewen, in Los Angeles. Dan is from Fresno, CA and will also be joining the Spaceward Bound expedition. He decided to pick up Dan Wray and me to take us with him into the desert tomorrow. Here are some pictures of the places where we were today. Tomorrow, I will get to show you pictures of the desert.

This is Phoenix, Arizona.....

And here is Los Angeles...

This is me in the hotel watching some basketball. When a polar bear spends 3 weeks in Indiana in March, that polar bear becomes a basketball fan!

Some Stuff to Take for Desert Research

Friday's Post - March 23, 2007

Here is a picture of many of the special things we packed for the Mojave Expedition.


After two weeks of getting ready, we will be flying to California tomorrow. Today we spent several hours gathering our gear and packing it carefully. We have so many things to take, but we were told to “pack light”. Except that the duffle bag weighs 49 pounds (and change) we feel that we were able to follow the directions to “pack light”.

Below are some things that we need for a week in the desert:

Sun Block

Wide Brim Hat

Sun glasses

Moisturizing lotion

Water bottles

Walking stick

Back pack

Camera

Binoculars

Compass

Hiking shoes

Flash light for exploring caves and lava tubes

Bug Spray

We also need to take bedding and towels, soap and shampoo, and a few changes of clothes. We even brought raingear, just in case there is one of those rare rain storms.

Can you think of reasons why we will need some of these things?

NASA in the Desert?

I want to go back a couple of weeks and tell you what I found out about next week's expedition. As I began to read about the scientists who would be conducting the research, I began to wonder why NASA is interested in the desert. After all, NASA does things like fly in space and build space stations, right?

And a long time ago, NASA was the agency that sent men to the moon and returned them safely to the Earth, right?

So why does NASA want scientists and teachers and polar bears to study the desert?

I found out that NASA has BIG plans to go back to the moon in about seven years. When astronauts get back to the moon, they are going to stay longer than they did in the 1970's. NASA wants the astronauts to learn how to live for many months on the moon.

Once NASA learns how to keep astronauts living on the moon for a few months at a time, then they want to send astronauts to live and work on Mars!

As you might imagine, it is too hard and too expensive to practice living on the moon or on Mars by going there. NASA needs a place closer to home to practice how they will live on other moons and planets. If you look closely, you will see that the surface of Mars and the surface of the moon look kind of like the desert. So NASA has decided to practice their space techniques in the desert. Someday soon they will send astronauts to start practicing in the desert, but for now, NASA is sending about 50 scientists and teachers (and one polar bear) to study the possibilities for living on the moon (and then Mars!).

Tomorrow, I will try to tell you some of the things we will be practicing and studying.

A Well-Traveled Bear

Wow!....I have been very busy for the last couple of weeks reading about the Mojave Desert and all of the research NASA is working on out there. I wanted to update all of you about my travel plans. While in the desert, I will be in one spot for meals and sleeping. During the day, we will be traveling around in the Mojave Desert conducting our research.
Even though I won't be flying most of the way around the globe like I did when I went to Antarctica, I will be in many different places in the United States. Since many of you tracked my position during the Antarctic trip aboard the Oden by plotting our latitude and longitude, I decided to give you my coordinates of the major places I will be in the next two weeks. Below is a chart, by date, of where I will be. Sometimes, I will only be in the place for an hour or two. At other times, I will be in one place for several days at a time. If you are curious, like me, you could get a map and try to figure out all the places I will visit. I have included some pictures for hints. I will list cities I have visited as I go so you can check how well you found my stops.

Saturday, March 24, 2007 41° 0' N 85° 48' W

Saturday, March 24, 2007 39° 44' N 86° 17' W

Saturday, March 24, 2007 33° 26' N 112° 1' W

Saturday, March 24, 2007 33° 56' N 118° 24' W

Sunday, March 25, 2007 35° 03' N 118° 09' W

Friday, March 30, 2007 36° 5' N 115° 10' W

Friday, March 30, 2007 36° 7' N 86° 41' W

Saturday, March 31, 2007 30° 25' N 89° 15' W

Sunday, April 1, 2007 29° 59' N 90° 15' W

Monday, April 2, 2007 29° 58' N 95° 21' W

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 29° 32' N 98° 28' W

Thursday, April 5, 2007 30° 18' N 97° 42' W

Friday, April 6, 2007 32° 51' N 96° 51' W

Saturday, April 7, 2007 35° 24' N 97° 36' W

Saturday, April 7, 2007 38° 45' N 90° 23' W

Sunday, April 8, 2007 41° 0' N 85° 48' W

If you can get permission to draw on a United States map, you can trace my path from place to place!

Some Background on NASA's Spaceward Bound

Here is some information about NASA's Spaceward Bound program. This information is also available on the NASA website.



Spaceward Bound is an educational program organized at NASA Ames in partnership with The Mars Society, and funded by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) at NASA Headquarters. The focus of Spaceward Bound is to train the next generation of space explorers by having students and teachers participate in the exploration of scientifically interesting but remote and extreme environments on Earth as analogs for human exploration of the Moon and Mars. 2006 is the first year of the program.
The program is comprised of two expeditions per year. The focus of one expedition is to involve teachers in authentic fieldwork so that they can bring that experience back to their classrooms and assist in the development of curriculum related to human exploration of remote and extreme environments. In June 2006, seven middle school teachers from around the U.S. teamed with seven teachers from Antofagasta, Chile to work alongside scientists in exploration of the Mars-like soils in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. Click on Field Expeditions to learn more about these expeditions.
The focus of the second expedition is to enable students at the upper undergraduate and graduate level (including teachers) to participate as crew members in two-week long immersive full-scale simulations of living and working on the Moon and Mars at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), established and operated by The Mars Society. The Spaceward Bound 2006 crew rotations at MDRS will take place between November 2006 and January 2007. Click on MDRS to learn more about these expeditions.

Information regarding the Mojave Expedition can be found at http://quest.nasa.gov/projects/spacewardbound/mojave2007/index.html
Dan Wray's Spaceward Bound profile can be viewed at http://quest.nasa.gov/projects/spacewardbound/mojave2007/bios/wray.html

First Stop, Indiana

The next thing I know, Allan has booked passage for me and I am on my way to Indiana!


When I arrived in Indiana, Dan had already gotten my desert clothes for me. I had sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, a vest for science equipment, a backpack for carrying water and supplies, and hiking boots. I could tell from the equipment that this would be a very different place than the cold weather experiences I had gotten used to.

I joined Dan and his family a couple of weeks before the trip and it was a good thing I did! There was so much to learn! I learned so much on the Oden about sea navigation, ocean science, and polar biology that I thought I was a pretty smart bear. I will have to learn at least as much new stuff on this next expedition!

How I Got Involved with Spaceward Bound

Not too long ago, I fulfilled my lifelong dream of seeing penguins in the Antarctic region. I was so lucky since not many polar bears get to travel to the “bottom of the world”. One night while I was talking to Allan, the dad in my family, I mentioned that I had seen the extremes of the earth. Growing up in the Arctic Circle and then visiting the Antarctic region with the Icebreaker/global warming research trip made me feel that I had experienced a very wide range of events. [You can read about my Antarctic expedition at http://www.polartrec.com/allanmillerjournal - look for the entries with Mrs. Chippy in them.]
Allan thought for a minute and then replied that in many ways, there are many similarities between the Arctic and Antarctic. Further, he explained that there are many places that are very hot and very dry. Some places barely have any water at all. All of this was news to me and I became very curious. I began to read about areas on earth called deserts. There certainly aren’t polar bears or penguins in the desert! I asked Allan if there would be a chance to visit a desert.
Fortune smiled on me again because Allan has a friend who is joining a research expedition to the Mojave Desert at the end of March. Allan called Dan Wray who is a science teacher in Indiana to ask if he could include me on his expedition.
Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 01:32PM by Dan Wray Post a Comment
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