Lanzarote

Landscape at Geoparque Lanzarote in the Canary Islands that is part of the second session of ESA's Pangaea training course for astronauts.

The session in Lanzarote is devoted to field geology in a ‘planetary analogue’, meaning a setting with terrain very similar to that found on Mars. The three martian ‘astronauts’ will be involved in a  series of geological traverses, each progressively more complex with specific scientific questions to be addressed. They will first study the traverses using satellite images, and then they will follow the traverses on the ground, communicating by radio with a ‘ground team’ of scientists. Then they will decide, based on that expert advice, on a set of sampling sites, where they will collect representative samples to be returned for further analysis.