Discovering Callisto

    The team and I had no idea what we would find when we woke up this morning. It started out like any other day. We started to get ready to explore Callisto, as we had days before. We were hoping to come upon something interesting and useful as we had uncovered some icy hills, only a few weeks before.

    Leaving the sleeping quarters, and our housing, we headed out north. After about 15 minutes of walking, we stumbled upon an almost black unknown substance. It was a solid, and there was quite a bit scattered throughout the surface of the moon. However, it was encased with rock. We decided to try to retrieve some. Using the tools on us, we couldn’t extract the substance so we took a couple pieces back to our base near some craters.

    Using a high speed drill, we broke off the edges of the rock, being extremely careful not to break the substance and our fingers. The black substance was removed from its encasing, after hard labor, in 30 minutes.

    As we studied the substance, we decided to perform tests on it. We performed a strength test using the tri-axial method. We, also, used the direct pull method. However, that did not work as well. On one of the black rocks, we grounded it up, which made it into a powder. Adding water, we were able to turn the black rock into a cement-like substance. We tried using it to patch holes and it worked.

    This could provide many uses to us, as it could be fatal to us if there was to be holes in our sleeping quarters and our overall capsule. If we decided to start building other buildings on Callisto, our team might have just uncovered an extremely valuable element.  When we compare the material to Earth’s material, the black substance is similar to cement or concrete, as it is used for building and holding things together. We have decided to call it Aldrinian, after a famous astronaut named Buzz Aldrin.