A couple of days ago, on last Saturday 5 Jan, a couple of friends, Martin and Fernando, invite me to a short trip to "Puerto Godoy" sand dunes (something like "Godoy's Port").
Godoy's Port, is a beautiful coastal area about 2 hours from Puerto Montt, where the wind from the open ocean made huge formations of very fine sand near the beach. This sector is very remote and sparsely populated, only some families come to enjoy the beach and perform various motorsports of all kind bikes and 4x4 vehicles.
We visit this area 3 or 4 times per year to enjoy the view and he beach as to travel with our 4x4 vehicles and motorbikes over the dunes.
But this time beside to enjoy the trip as usual, I take the opportunity to collect some very fine sand samples to be use it later in our future test Traction Table. The tilt table that we are already in process to build, is going to be use it to test the traction system and other parameters of the final version of our Mini-Dandelion rover. The table is going to be of about 2x5 mt and it can be full with several tons of sand, so better to start soon the sand collection! :-)
Next a couple of pictures of the trip...
Just after leave Puerto Montt, the view is very beautiful, many farming and agricultural areas, beside that it was a very nice weather that day.
This picture shows from high the coaster area of Godoy's Port...
Arriving to the beach....this is a open Pacific ocean area, very low population a even less tourists...
...here is the secret road ;-) , at some point on the beach, there is a deviation with a very small and hard route that you must follow to rich the dunes...
...And finally!, the dunes..next some beautiful pictures of the dunes formations and views...
We try to collect the sand from the higher ground possible this is because the wind is always covering the higher ground areas with the finest sand produced by the erosion of the lower areas.
If the mechanical properties of this sand and close to the ones of the material on the moon, mean that it can be use it on the tests and we can go back to collect more samples
See you soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment