Blog

A long journey has now come to an end. The rest of the team left Zermatt today. We have all arrived at home and are now starting with the final report.

Whoa! What a journey it's been. Let's sum up the day for the last time:

Now that everything is over, we want to use the time to describe our workplace in more detail. The Klein-Matterhorn is 3883 meters above sea level. It can be reached by a 45 minutes gondola ride. How this looks like can be seen in the hyperlapse video in the photo gallery. A simplified floor plan of the mountain station can...

Today was the last day for testing. However, the day started with a visit of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Swiss Space Office (SSO). Johann-Dietrich Wörner, director general of ESA, listened to the projects of the teams, gave a short speech and answered the questions of the participants. Most of the questions were about manned lunar...

Since a change of the weather is not in sight, we were offered a new place in the "Glacier Palace". The Glacier Palace is an underground ice cave in the Klein-Matterhorn; approx. 10 meters below the surface. Our new test zone is located directly in front of the habitat and offers a large ice surface.

The last days were very hot in Europe. Also in Zermatt one feels the heat, just like on the Klein-Matterhorn. To our disadvantage, the sun is so intense that we stood in front of a puddle this morning. A problem that we could not solve, because the new layer melted again and again. Fortunately we were able to take more...

The day began like any other: Setup - Testing - Setback - Repair. We were able to hand over two ice core samples to the VU Amsterdam team before a screw broke due to incorrect assembly. Meanwhile improvisation is one of our top skills, so we got rid of this problem within an hour. After lunch we met with...

Before the daily report we would like to draw your attention to the first media reports. The first one can be found on the platform 20min.ch and is in French. The second report was published by the Berner Zeitung. In both videos you can see our experiment - the interviews will follow.

Today was the first day our experiments were open to the public. In the last days we have often talked to tourists on the Klein-Matterhorn. But today was the first day on which journalists were allowed to interview us. Our team leader, Felix Grubert, had two interviews with Swiss TV stations. More information will follow the next days!

Get up at 8 a.m. - breakfast - weatherproof clothes - 45 min gondola ride - 3 hours work - lunch - 1,5 hours work - last gondola ride (45 min) into the valley.