Liam (r) prepares one of PLL’s 140-pound anchors for deployment. With him (l to r) are Cristian, Trey and Chris. Credit: XenoQuest Media

by Henry Bortman

The Planetary Lake Lander has been moored for the past week a short distance off the southern shore of Laguna Negra, near PLL Base Camp. Its proximity to camp enabled engineers to test its data-sampling and communications equipment. And to easily get out to the device to fix whatever annoying problems – miswired connections, transmission glitches – cropped up.

Now that the exciting world of the northwest shore has been explored and found to be a scientific wonderland, however, the time has come to relocate. A decision was made a couple of days ago to move PLL to a spot just off the northwest shore, where the waters of Victoria’s Cascade tumble into the lake, bringing with them nutrient-rich glacial sediments. This location will provide very different information than the crystal-clear, and nutrient-poor, waters near Base Camp.

Liam (standing) and Trey sail PLL toward the northwest finger of Laguna Negra. Credit: Chris Haberle

The spot chosen offered a finely tuned mix of characteristics. There was the glacial melt water, of course, fantastic for science. But there was also, conveniently, a pair of underwater landslides, discovered during Chris Haberle’s bathymetric survey of the area. That was good for anchoring PLL so it stays put for the next three months. And to top it off, the arc of the sun across the sky lined up nicely with PLL’s solar panels, so there will be no worry the scientific equipment will run short on power.

Yesterday, Trey and Liam, along with Chris and Cristian, spent the day preparing PLL for its journey to and installation in its new home. That meant, first, moving it from its temporary home to Launch Point, on the lake’s southwest shore. The advantage of working at Launch Point is that it’s the one spot along the lakeshore accessible by road.

The scientific and communications equipment had already been checked and double-checked. What remained to be done was outfitting PLL with new anchors. Two 140-pound anchors. These were too heavy to lift, so they had to be disassembled, carried onto the PLL’s pontoon in pieces, and then reassembled. While moored off the southern shore of the lake, PLL has been held in place by relatively lightweight anchors, but for it’s longer-term stay on the northwest shore, it needs to be anchored more securely.

The Planetary Lake Lander moored in its summer home off the northwest shore of Laguna Negra. In the lower left, the waters of Victoria’s Cascade. Credit: Chris Haberle

Assembling the anchors was only step one. Liam spent most of the day yesterday “flaking” the ropes attached to the anchors. This is not a problem the average person has to be concerned with, but when you’re floating on the surface of deep, hypothermia-inducing water, on a moderately unstable platform, and planning to drop overboard a pair of 140-pound anchors attached to very long ropes, it’s a good idea to prepare carefully.

You might think the best approach would be to coil the rope in a cute little circular pile. Turns out, that’s not the case. As you may have experienced with a garden hose, what appears to be neatly coiled, when pulled on, can suddenly become hopelessly tangled.

That’s not such a big problem when you’re dealing with a garden hose. But when you’re dealing with a long rope, with a 140-pound weight attached to one end, and when you are about to send that weight hurtling down through 45 meters of water, you want the rope to play out smoothly, not to snag on anything. Such as a piece of expensive equipment. Or someone’s ankle. Because whatever it snags on will (a) probably get broken; and (b) be dragged down into the deep with little hope of recovery.

So you flake the rope. Which means you stack it up in what looks like a random back-and-forth pile, but a pile that, crucially, is snag-resistant. And then you flake the other rope. And then you go back and flake the first rope again, just to be sure. And then the second rope, again. And a third time, to be really, really sure.

All this flaking was time well spent. Today, the PLL was sailed to its new location, the ropes were deployed without incident, and PLL was secured for its three-month stay in the northwest waters of Laguna Negra.

It was after that that the problem occurred. When PLL engineers pulled out their ruggedized, work-anywhere laptop to “talk” to the equipment onboard the lander, they couldn’t establish communication. That was confusing. And annoying. Here they were standing right next to the device they were trying to communicate with, a device they had communicated with successfully from the Robo Dome only the day before, and suddenly a communications link that had been working perfectly had gone awry.

Long story short: when the laptop had been in the Robo Dome, it had been attached to an external monitor. And the window for the software package that talked to PLL had been displayed on that external monitor. But out on the water, there was only the laptop. No external monitor. You’d think the software could figure that out and display the window in question on the laptop screen. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. Instead, all it could do was issue a cryptic error message. Fortunately, once the team got back to the Robo Dome and reattached the external monitor, communication was re-established.

Now that everything’s working as it should, PLL is set to spend the next three months collecting data and transmitting it back to the IRG group at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. At that point, some members of the PLL team will retrieve the device and ship it back to Ames, where it will get upgraded with both new hardware and new software, before being brought back to Laguna Negra next summer.

The data that it sends back will form the basis for the development of the first version of PLL’s autonomous control software. Developing that autonomous software is the primary technology goal of the PLL ASTEP (Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets) project. It’s not yet clear how “smart” the software will be in Year 2 of the project. Ultimately, the goal is to program PLL to make decisions on its own about what events are of scientific interest and about how best to study those events. But in Year 2, it may not implement autonomous decisions, but rather limit itself to performing the analysis that would lead to such decisions.

The domes of PLL Base Camp, still in shadow, while across the lake Cerro Echaurren catches early morning light. Credit: Henry Bortman

by Henry Bortman

Most mornings I wake up around 5:30, when night is just beginning to fade into day. With the tent zipped shut for warmth, I hear dawn coming before I see it. It starts with a bird that sounds like a cross between a crow and a duck. Two short blasts. If I were writing a symphony of daybreak at Laguna Negra, I would score it with a coronet. It echoes off the mountains that surround the lake. This is always the first sound of the day. Two or three of these birds call back and forth to each other.

Soon after, other birds join in, a chorus of woodwind sounds – flute, piccolo, clarinet, each with a different song. Every morning starts this way: the coronet call, followed by the woodwinds. And every morning I consider getting up to watch the dawn; then change my mind and snuggle back down into my sleeping bag. I can always go out and see it tomorrow.

But today I get up, put on my warm clothes, unzip the tent, and step outside. The world is still, as if suspended for a moment between darkness and the return of light.

I head east, toward the hills of rock rubble one has to traverse to get the best view of Meson Alto, the high peak to the east of camp. This is the peak that glows pink, peach blush, dried cranberry, merlot at sunset. In the morning, it puts on a different show.

Meson Alto, with an assist from rare morning clouds, announces the imminent arrival of sunlight. Credit: Henry Bortman

I’m high up above Laguna Negra now. I can see the domes and tents of our campsite. No one else is awake yet. Lizards dart behind rocks. A rabbit hops across my path. Birds watch me approach, eyeing me suspiciously, flying off a short distance when I get too close. They’re still singing, but not as persistently as they were earlier.

I continue climbing, reaching the top of the ridge on the east side of camp. From here there is a better view of Meson Alto and the other mountains to its south, but if I want to see them in their full glory, I will have to cross a large boulder-strewn field to another ridge. There’s always another ridge.

From here I can see the vast extent of the boulder field, which stretches down to our campsite – in fact, we’re camped within it. The boulders are the terminal moraine of the glacier that carved out Laguna Negra. From up here on the ridge, I can sense the tremendous expanse of terrain covered by the glacier, thousands of years ago, as it scoured out the 300-foot-deep bowl that is now filled with water; I can hear the ancient glacier, grinding away at the rock, pushing boulders ahead of it in its path as it flows down from Cerro Echuarren, where what remains of the glacier sits today.

Cerro Echaurren is just beginning to be lit by sunlight now. It is nearly white light, with just a hint of yellow. Other peaks in the area block the sun from lighting up the scene with the deeper colors of early morning. I stop to sit on a rock and watch the light creep down the mountain, down onto the glacier, down toward the water.

It’s calm this morning, even more so than usual, but not perfectly calm. The lake is not a mirror. Rather, as the peaks light up, long shimmering streaks of reflected light stretch out from the base of the mountains across the lake toward me.

I sit cross-legged on a large, flat rock, straighten my spine, breathe. I get lost in the flickering light on the lake. I’m still in shadow, in the chill of night, because the sun has not yet risen above the rim of Meson Alto.

As the nearly full moon sets in the west, early light on Cerro Echaurren is reflected on the still water of Laguna Negra.

I get up, walk around a bit, searching for a path to the next ridge to the east, so that I can get a full view of Meson Alto, but I don’t see any way to get there without having to do a lot of boulder-hopping. Most places, there are paths between the boulders, but here I don’t see a way. I decide not to make the attempt. I’m by myself, and proceeding east would put me out of line of sight of the camp.

I feel mixed about not achieving this goal. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I got here. Other people have made the trek and come back, reporting on the incredible view. But not today.

I start to head back toward camp. Every couple of minutes I stop and look back at Meson Alto, to see if it has started its morning light show. It puts on two shows each day, one at sunset, when it glows, the other when the sun is about to crest each morning.

The morning show is beginning. A bright white line of light rims its jagged, slanting summit. Rays begin to shine through the ragged rim, upward and out to the sides. As the sun gets closer to cresting the rim, the rays shift and grow. Then, just before the edge of the sun appears, the rays contract and become fuzzier, less distinct.

The first bright flash of sun breaks through between two small jagged mountain teeth. Within a minute, the entire sun is above the rim of Meson Alto. The hillside where I’m standing on the trail is now flooded with light. The temperature shifts from chill to warm. I unzip my down jacket, take off my scarf and gloves.

I make my way down the hillside into camp, now full of activity. It’s eight o’clock. Breakfast is waiting.

Note: The photos below aren’t from the morning described above. I decided to watch dawn light up the landscape that morning without looking through a viewfinder. Here are some images from other days, when I was out with my camera.

The northwest “finger” of Laguna Negra can be seen near the center of this Goolge Earth image of the region. In the lower left, Laguna Lo Encañado is visible. Credit: Image ©2011 GeoEye/DigitalGlobe/Google; Data SIO/NOAA/U.S. Navy/NGA/GEBCO

by Henry Bortman

So far, our activities have focused on the waters along the southern shore of Laguna Negra, with occasional side trips to Laguna Lo Encañado to collect samples. But yesterday, for the first time, PLL team members Liam Pedersen and Chris Haberle struck out in the battery-powered Zodiac, Mariner 1, on a 40-minute, 4-kilometer journey to the northwest shore of the lake.

There, they discovered another world.

Laguna Negra is only 1.5 kilometers wide, but it is 6 kilometers long, the longer direction running north-south. The lake has two long “fingers” that stretch north, one to the northwest, the other to the northeast.

PLL Base Camp is situated at the center of the southern shore. The Echaurren glacier, however, sits high above the northwest finger. The team has been anxious to do research in this area, because it is where interaction between the glacier and the lake is likely to be greatest. That also makes it an ideal spot to consider as a summer home for the Planetary Lake Lander.

What a difference a few kilometers makes. Upon approaching the shoreline, the PLL advance team spotted underwater caves with denser vegetation than the scraggly assortment of plants along the southern shore. Then they saw the streams, lined with lush vegetation, and displays of wildflowers. And the massive waterfall, Victoria’s Cascade, named by the expedition that explored the area a century and a half ago.

Mariner 1 (the small red dot near the bottom center of the image) sets sail for Hangnail Cove, on the northwest shore of Laguna Negra, below the Echaurren glacier. Credit: Trey Smith)

Most importantly, though, from a scientific point of view, was the turbidity of the northwest water where the waterfall meets Laguna Negra. Most of the lake is crystal clear, which makes for lovely sightseeing, but an indication that the lake is nutrient-poor. As a result of global warming, the glacier in recent years has retreated to a great extent. There is no longer any direct contact between the glacier and the lake. And the water that spills down into the lake from the melting ice no longer carries much sediment. It is that sediment that makes lake waters cloudy. It is also that sediment that carries nutrients for life.

There is a small area on the northwest shore where this turbid water can be seen diffusing into the lake, but because it’s colder than the lake water, it quickly sinks to the bottom, mixing very little with the otherwise transparent lake.

Liam Pedersen, seated near the point where the thundering Victoria’s Cascade pours glacial water and sediment into Laguna Negra, conducts a promising test of communications between the lake’s northwest shore and PLL Base Camp on the south shore. Credit: Chris Haberle

It is just this interaction between the glacier and the lake, however, and the difference between this area, which can support a distinct ecosystem, and other parts of the lake, that makes it scientifically appealing – and a potential long-term site for the Planetary Lake Lander.

Fortunately, communications tests conducted between the northwest-shore landing site and PLL Base Camp were successful, making the prospect of situating the lake lander there for the summer even more promising.

Storm clouds that built up over Laguna Negra for several afternoons in a row sent the PLL team indoors. Credit: Henry Bortman

by Henry Bortman

The weather has taken a turn toward the dramatic. For the first few days we were here, the sky was practically cloudless all day long. Then for a couple of days, puffy white clouds would build up in the afternoon. But in the past couple of days, the afternoon sky has gone dark, we’ve heard thunder in the distance, and the peaks of the mountains that surround the lake have been obscured in mist.

And it snowed. Not down here in base camp. Here we got a half an hour or so of light rain. But up on Cerro Echaurren to the north and even more so on Meson Alto to the east, there are new dustings of white powder. That may not seem odd to those of you reading this in the northern hemisphere, where winter is approaching. But here below the Equator, we are only two weeks from the first day of summer.

Although some of us would prefer to sit on a rock overlooking the lake, listening to the wind and watching cloud formations roll through, the threat of thunderstorms has sent us scurrying to zip up the rain flies on our tents and has forced most of our activity indoors. It has also put a temporary halt to biological sampling on the lake.

Before the storms moved in, researchers collected samples and took measurements along the shore of Laguna Negra. Here Luis A. Rivas (l) monitors the temperature and other physico-chemical properties of the lake’s water. Commodore Chris Haberle has his hand on the tiller. Credit: Henry Bortman

But biologists are dedicated lot, and some members of the PLL team have plenty of samples, collected when the weather was better, that need to be filtered and prepared for laboratory analysis. This process involves sucking up water, liters and liters of water collected from Laguna Negra and Laguna Lo Encañado, into a syringe, some 50 milliliters at a time, and then forcing the water through a small circular filter laced with pores tiny enough to trap microbial cells.

The water gets discarded, except a small volume that will be use for measuring dissolved cations and anions. Also of interest is the yellowish-brown stain left behind on the filter paper, comprised largely of microorganisms from the lake.

Some of these filters are preserved in ethanol, for later DNA extraction. Other filters are kept on dry ice until they can be transported down to Santiago de Chile University, where they will be freeze-dried for the trip back to Madrid, Spain.

Madrid is where microbial ecologists Yolanda Blanco and Luis A. Rivas work, at the Centro de Astrobiología. They are part of a team that for the past several years has been developing a life-detection device, a device they hope will be sent one day to Mars, or perhaps to other worlds in our solar system, in search of evidence for extra-terrestrial life.

In the biological dome, the collected samples are proccessed and analyzed. Here, Yolanda Blanco is sonicating the biological material trapped on one of the filters. Credit: Henry Bortman

The device goes by the name SOLID (Signs Of LIfe Detector), which includes an antibody microarray in its sample analysis unit. This microarray crams hundreds of microscopic dots, each a distinct biological probe, onto a small glass slide. The dots, printed onto the slide, contain antibodies. Some of these antibodies react to specific types of organisms. Others react to common biological molecules, such as amino acids, the building blocks of proteins; or the lipids found in cell walls. Unlike past life-detection methods that look for biosignatures by heating a sample to high temperatures and sniffing at the released gases, the antibody-microarray approach is less destructive, more precise and capable of searching for hundreds of different biosignatures simultaneously.

The array is exposed to a sample, such as the material trapped by filtering water from Laguna Negra. If the organism or biomolecule that a particular antibody is designed to detect is present in the sample, the antibody binds to the sample material. This captured material is revealed by using a fluorescent probe. Examined under the right type of light, these fluorescent tags appear as glowing dots. The position of the dot on the glass slide tells researchers which organism or molecule has been detected.

Blanco, Rivas and their colleagues previously tested detectors at Rio Tinto, in Spain, and in Chile’s Atacama Desert, each time with a slightly different emphasis tuned to the environmental conditions of those field sites. One focus of the work at Laguna Negra will be looking for psychrophilic, or cold-loving, organisms.