Robot test way up North

I mentioned earlier that one of our robots was up North. Well, it's been visiting an outpost -- the McGill Arctic Research Station -- of McGIll University and the Canadian government on Axel Heiberg Island in the territory of Nunavut, Canada. This is very far North -- there's not much other land as far north except Komsomolets Island in Russia and Northern Greenland.

Philippe Giguere from our lab has taken the robot up there as part of an experiment dealing with sensing in harsh environments in the context of developing tools for space exploration and, in particular, astrobiology. The robot is being used to deploy an exotic automated microscope that can detect signs of life in hostile environments, much as one might wish to do on the another planetary body like Europa or Mars. Of course, this experiment only tests a small fraction of the suit of technologies that would be needed for a genuine extra-terrestrial mission, but is still very satisfying to work on in this context. Sending Philippe instead of going myself made a lot of sense in terms on scheduling and logistics, but I am certainly envious and a bit disappointed I didn't get to go. The mission seems to have gone very well based on the reports back to home, and the robot carried the holographic microscope successfully.

This location is, incidentally, pretty close to the North magnetic pole. Among the other interesting features of this location, the Earth's lines of magnetic flux point almost straight down so that a magnetic compass is pretty much useless there.