From August 18th to September 14th 2014, our group will lead a field expedition to the ~36 km diameter West Clearwater Lake impact structure in northern Quebec. Formed approximately 290 million years ago, this crater has not been studied in detail since the 1970′s and remains little explored. This expedition has multiple facets. This marks the fourth summer in a row that I’ve teamed up with the Canadian Space Agency to provide training in field geology to Canadian astronauts. For the first time, this year Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques will join our team! The field team includes three graduate students from Western (Mary Kerrigan, Adam Coulter, and Rebecca Wilks), field technician Robert Misener, and a graduate student from Imperial College London, Auriol Rae. After a week in the field, we will be joined by a team of eight from the U.S. as part of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) FINESSE team! Updates from the field will be posted here and via twitter.
