July 21, 2000
JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News
HAUGHTON CRATER, Devon Island — This Thursday, members of the Haughton-Mars project were to have celebrated the 32nd anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon with, weather permitting, a short walk around Devon Island in a space suit.
This summer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Mars Society, a private group interested in Mars exploration, are recreating Mars on the dusty, windswept hills of Devon Island.
Not far from the 20 km-wide, 23-million-year old Haughton Crater, there’s a modernistic mini-city of bright tents and winter havens which form a base used to test a wide variety of technology that may one day be used in the exploration of Mars.
Despite high winds, rain, and cool temperatures, as well as the loss of an airlifted load of supplies that splattered across the land, experimental work continues in such areas as telemedicine, communications, and adapted land transportation.
A dwelling for six people, the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, made of molded fibreglass, is also being erected as a test habitat for Mars living.
The projects’ participants are driven by a shared passion for the Red Planet.
"I’m a rocket scientist, and I want to go to Mars," said NASA scientist Pascal Lee, who is also the site’s project chief.
Although more than 40 people are at the Haughton-Mars site and international media from the US, Japan, Britain readied to spread pictures of the project around the world, the fate of the well-publicized activity here was uncertain even in June.
Lee, in fact, withdrew his application for use of Inuit land by two projects, one sponsored by NASA and the other by the Mars Society.
They held on to their applications for permits to use Crown land and withdrew their application for use of Inuit-owned lands in and around the crater, which is 70 per cent owned by the community of Grise Fiord.
Lee said he understood this community’s reluctance to approve the land use out concern for the two projects’ impact on animal migration.
"But it’s not like we are laying asphalt," Lee said.
Lee said NASA has been exceptionally careful to respect all the conditions for land use included in its past permits over the last three years.
When Lee and other members of his team visited Grise Fiord in June, they also heard that residents felt they didn’t have enough information on the project. Lee had also visited Iqaluit last October, meeting with officials and media, who he hoped would pass the information on the Haughton-Mars projects along to Grise Fiord.
"I told them this is what we’re about, and this is what we’re not. We’re not gringos coming up from the South to harm the land," he said.
Lee would like to involve people in Grise Fiord by offering them employment or collaboration in projects on the site.
He said that Devon Island, as "the largest uninhabitated island on the planet", has played an important role in the exploration of the North by Inuit and Arctic explorers, one that could continue, given the public’s fascintation with space travel.
"The whole history of the place is tied to the quest to explore and here we are using it as a springboard for exploration," Lee said.
Lee suggested, that if the projects continue here on Devon Island, Nunavut may play a historical role in interplanetary travel.