Today at Brown

REYKJAVIK — As the sun set in a spectacular blend of rainbow pastels over Lake Myvatn, the Brown geology team prepared its final meal.

Over dinner (pasta with a vegetarian sauce, a heaping garden salad with oil and garlic dressing and bread with Icelandic butter), the group discussed plans: Jack, Mike and I would return to Reykjavik, rising at 6 a.m. for the seven-hour drive to the airport and a flight that evening to Boston. (We would have to deplane due to engine trouble and get on another flight.)

Bethany and Ulyana would continue rock hunting and collecting for the next four days. First, the two graduate students would head east to a fjord to observe how the rivers and hills there had been changed by water and to gather rhyolites, light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks similar to granite in composition. Then, they would head along a southern route toward Reykjavik, stopping to gather olivine-rich basaltic samples along the way. They’d also be on the lookout for more zeolites, the mineral Bethany had detected on Mars from orbiting spacecraft.

“We’re tracking [the minerals] down in their natural setting,” she said, “to see how they look in the rock.”

Once they reach Reykjavik, Bethany and Ulyana will send the samples home. It will be quite a haul: More than two dozen core samples, many of which are 50 centimeters (20 inches) long, and dozens of canvas sacks and plastic bags of rocks. Before the trip, Ulyana had secured a permit from the Icelandic government to send up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of rocks from Iceland to Brown.

The real work will begin when they return. They will analyze the samples in detail. Ulyana will write her master’s thesis from the results, and Bethany will use the results as a key portion of her Ph.D. dissertation.

While the team will need time to try to solve the riddles of water’s influence on Mars and the depth of its interaction with rocks on the planet, Jack and Mike pronounced the trip a success. They had reached the areas they had wanted and collected the samples they had sought. And the group, working together for the first time, flowed seamlessly, with each party able to accomplish its objectives and everyone pitching in together when needed.

“I thought it was good,” Jack said. “It was so cooperative.”

Mike praised Ulyana for planning a successful trip with “no outline, no lab manual, no syllabus.”

“This is inventing something,” he added.

Ulyana was simply overjoyed by the whole experience.

“The team dynamic has been incredible,” she said. “I’ve had a blast.”