210-JournalistReport

Journalist Report

02/10/2014

Tereza Pultarova

Mysterious space rock

During yesterday's EVA, which aimed to explore the wider area around

the base in order to identify

locations suitable for base expansion, Tereza, Ondrej and Filip found

a strange rock on a sandy

plateau about 3 km north from the base.

The brown surface of the rock, a size of a deformed tangerine, was

slightly porous and seemed like

it could have been subject to extreme heat.

The crew-members took the stone back to the base. With the remaining

Internet data available, they

performed an Internet search and found the rock looks very much like

an ordinary chondrite

meteorite. However, crew scientist Elif was somewhat sceptical. "I

have seen similar stones during

an EVA earlier and I tried to split them, which was very easy - they

were basically just layers of

sand, clay and silt glued together in the desert environment," she

explained to the disappointment

of some of the other crew members who already took to the idea of

having found a space rock (to be

honest, it would have been quite an impressive coincidence to pick up

a meteorite so easily.

Elif used a hammer and tried to split the space rock in the lab inside

the hab. However, the space

rock did not give in even after five powerful blows. Only one tiny

chip flew away revealing a gray-

black slightly granular inner structure.

Today, the crew performed another EVA, again aiming to find a location

suitable for building a solar

array and a wind-turbine field to expand the base. During the mission,

they visited the site where

the 'space rock' was collected, this time with Elif aboard.

Several similar stones were collected, with each of them breaking into

pieces with the first smashes

- though from outside they might have looked quite similar to the

yesterday's space rock, their

structure was obviously far less sturdy.

The hopes of finding a meteorite melted away earlier in the evening

after the crew members tried to

perform a magnetic test using a kitchen magnet from the fridge inside

the hab. The space rock didn't

seem to show any magnetic activity. But what the hell it is then?

Anyone could give us a resolution?

During the EVA some semi-suitable areas were identified to build the

wind turbines and solar power

stations, however, the sandy, muddy terrain would make every

construction rather challenging