The Central Rose Garden in Christchurch
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The diary as published in The Conversation
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We live in a privileged time, when travel around the world is easy and cheap. It is commonplace for Australians to see Times Square in New York, the Great Wall in China, or trek in Nepal.
But one continent remains elusive. One continent contains vast areas where no human has ever set foot. One continent has a magnetic attraction for many people. One continent has more penguins than sheep.
Antarctica.
With my colleagues at the University of New South Wales, I am privileged to be involved in scientific research in this remote continent, roughly twice the size of Australia, and with almost half of it above the altitude of Australia's Mt Kosciusko.
Over the next six weeks or so in these "diaries" in The Conversation I will be giving you a taste of what it is like to travel and work in this most beautiful and unusual location on Earth. Each day I will send back a short entry, with photos, noting interesting events, and enlivened - hopefully - with an occasional touch of humour.
Firstly, a quick introduction. My name is Michael Ashley and I'm a 53-year old Professor of Astrophysics at the University of New South Wales. I'm travelling with three much younger members of the team: Yael Augarten, Campbell McLaren, and Luke Bycroft. This is my fifth trip to Antarctica over a 16 year period; for the others it is their first, and their excitement is contagious.
Our scientific mission is to place a 0.6 metre aperture terahertz telescope at one of the most remote places on Earth: a place called Ridge A, some 850 km from the South Pole itself, and at an elevation of 4050 metres.
No one has ever been to Ridge A. And no one will stay there to look after our telescope after we leave. It has to be able to operate for a year without anyone on site.
This is a high risk experiment, containing several elements that have never been tried before. If all goes well the telescope will operate throughout 2012 and we will gain new insights into how stars are formed in our Galaxy. But there are numerous things that can go wrong to thwart our plans. You will be able to read about our successes, and possible failures, here at The Conversation.
I should point out that our project is in collaboration with Craig Kulesa from the University of Arizona, and is being funded from a combination of Australian and US government grants.
I will fill you in on more details of the project, and why we have to go to Antarctica, in subsequent entries.
Before travelling to Antarctica, everyone on the team has to be PQ'ed, which stands for "Physically Qualified". This involves a battery of medical and dental tests, including blood samples, chest and teeth x-rays, exercise stress tests, prostate probings, and so on. About 30 pages of documentation are needed, and we only achieve final clearance in the last week.
Contrary to rumour, we don't have to have our appendixes removed. Nor are there any extensive psychological tests---which make me nervously wonder which one of us will break down under the pressure and become an axe-wielding maniac (see John Carpenter's movie The Thing, which is traditionally shown at South Pole Station in mid-February after the last flight out, when the remaining 50 people have no option but to stay until aircraft can return in October).
Teeth are one of the main health concerns, since there are only rudimentary dental facilities "on the ice". Several earlier colleagues from UNSW have had to had their wisdom teeth removed to travel to Antarctica.
Our preparation has also involved a year's work building the telescope and its supporting infrastructure. This culminated in a nightmarish three months of 14-18 hour days, 7 days a week, while we struggled to meet the shipping deadlines. On two occasions in the last month our team didn't sleep for 36 hours straight. I will miss my wife and two daughters for the 6 weeks I am in Antarctica - although in reality I haven't seen much of them for three months.
It is a huge relief to have the construction phase of the project complete and to have an afternoon's relaxation in Christchurch, New Zealand, the gateway for Operation Deep Freeze - the codename for the US Antarctic Program's presence here.
Knowing that for the next 6 weeks I will be surrounded by ice, I decided to go walking in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens, which contains the most magnificent circular rose garden that can be imagined. I also enjoy the humidity and the occasional gentle rainfall - where we are going it hasn't rained for 50 million years.
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The Central Rose Garden in Christchurch
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We are scheduled to fly to McMurdo Station in Antarctica tonight at 9pm. The sun doesn't set before 9pm, and the aircraft travels fast enough that the sun won't set during our trip to the ice. In fact, our next sunset is six weeks off.
At 6pm we receive our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) clothing. This is a well-honed procedure whereby you send your measurements to the Clothing Distribution Centre (CDC) and they prepare an orange bag containing the sort of clothing (e.g., "Expedition Underdrawers") that allows you to comfortably work outside at temperatures of -50C or below.
A sample of some of the Extreme Cold Weather clothing
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After we have our ECW, a customs official with a sniffer dog checks our bags for drugs, and we proceed to the pre-flight briefing.
The pre-flight briefing in Christchurch
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Shortly after 8pm we are loaded onto the US Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft for the 5 hour flight to McMurdo. There are some twenty passengers on the flight, with the bulk of the cavernous interior of the C-17 being taken up by cargo.
Boarding the C-17 Globemaster in Christchurch for the flight to Antarctica. Luke, Campbell and Yael are on the right.
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Military flights like these are quite different from commercial ones. For starters, the plane is very noisy, mandating ear plugs. Then there are the unusual safety features, such as the emergency exit that requires you to cut through a metal plate, and the four large pods in the ceiling of the aircraft containing life rafts that, in the event of a water landing, are expelled by explosive bolts. A crew member assures me that the airframe could survive a water landing, although it has never been tried.
Inside the C-17, halfway to Antarctica. From left to right, Michael, Yael, Luke and Campbell.
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Almost at Antarctica, cloud prevented us seeing the ice.
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The emergency exit in the C-17. I hope someone brought an axe.
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Touchdown at McMurdo, Antarctica, -78 degrees south.
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Slightly less than 5 hours after leaving a beautiful warm New Zealand day, we touch down on the Pegasus ice runway, built on the permanent ice shelf covering the Ross Sea.
We emerge blinking into the alien Antarctic landscape, and our senses are assaulted by the entirely new environment. Overcast conditions block our view of Mt Erebus, altitude 3,794 metres, an active volcano some 38 km away.
Yael, Luke and Campbell having their first taste of Antarctica. Campbell isn't really that big, it is a trick of the wide-angle lens.
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Although McMurdo Station is only 12km distant, it is located on Ross Island, and we have to travel over 30km to guarantee that we are always driving on the solid, permanent, ice that covers the Ross Sea. The direct route would likely result in our vehicle, "Ivan the Tera Bus", falling through the ice and plunging to the bottom of the Ross Sea. This has happened before to bulldozer drivers, and is an experience best avoided.
Ivan the Tera Bus - our transport from the airfield to McMurdo itself.
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The sign on the road just after Scott Base.
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McMurdo feels what I imagine a Canadian mining town would be like. There is dark brown volcanic dirt everywhere. Massive tanks contain a year's supply of kerosene for heating, electricity generation, water desalination, and powering the vehicles and aircraft. Three wind turbines associated with New Zealand's nearby Scott Base are a useful renewable energy source.
All sorts of interesting vehicles are to be found on the ice.
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First port of call in McMurdo is breakfast in the Galley at 5am, followed by a introductory briefing at 6:30am in the Chalet. At 7:30am we have an hour-long briefing from the science support staff, and then another hour discussing the logistics of the deployment of our experiment at Ridge A. By this stage, having had no sleep for 24 hours, we are starting to loose concentration.
The arrival briefing in the Chalet.
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Luke, Campbell, and I are sharing a small room in a warmly-heated dormitory building, Yael is in similar accommodation nearby.
Dormitory accommodation at McMurdo, with Observatory Hill in the background. My dorm is the one immediately to the left of the blue one, which is the Galley.
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After a couple of hours essential sleep, Luke and I climb up the nearby Observation Hill, a steep walk with an altitude gain of 230m, affording superb views in all directions. The massive slopes of Mt Erebus are visible, although the summit is hidden by a dramatic circle of clouds, providing an effect reminiscent of a scene from the movie The Lord of the Rings.
Michael (almost undetectable, in ninja mode) and Luke on top of Observation Hill.
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In the afternoon, we explore Discovery Hut, used by several Antarctic explorers in the early 1900s. There is a mummified seal carcass outside the hut dating from around 1912.
McMurdo, with Discovery Hut in the foreground.
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Inside Discovery Hut, a volunteer guide explains the history of the hut to Campbell and Luke.
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Near Hut Point, where the land meets the sea ice, we see four or five Weddell seals basking in the afternoon sun. They align themselves perpendicularly to the sun's rays to gain the maximum warming effect. We are perhaps 30 metres from the seals but can't approach any closer since the protocol here is not to disturb the wildlife - if the animal reacts to your presence, you are too close.
Luke has heard that there are large numbers of penguins where the sea ice meets the ocean, a line that is just visible from Observation Hill. We won't see any penguins where we are though - the seals would make quick work of them.
Remarkably, today marks the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen's arrival at the South Pole. The Norwegian Prime Minister and twenty or so guests and dignitaries are at the US South Pole Station to celebrate the event. Apparently, around 100 Norwegian skiers are converging on the Pole as I write this.
Most people aren't aware that the central areas of Antarctic are quite high. The South Pole itself is at an altitude of 2835 metres, and sits on a 3km thickness of ice going down to bedrock. At this height, altitude sickness is a real possibility, particularly since the lower barometric pressure over Antarctica can raise the apparent altitude to 3600 metres or more. Where we are going, Ridge A, the apparent altitude (which is what the human body feels), can be as high at 5100 metres, which is into serious high-altitude territory.
To prepare for this we have to take a high altitude class, from 8am till 10am this morning. We learn all about the symptoms of altitude sickness and what to do about them. When mountaineering, the best approach is to loose altitude fast, but you don't have this option on the Antarctic plateau since it is so flat: a slope of about 1 part in 1000 near Ridge A.
The alternative to retreating to a lower altitude is to use a Gamow bag, which is a portable sack into which a sick person can be zipped; the bag can then be pressurized to bring the patient down to a lower effective altitude. We will be carrying one of these bags on the trip to Ridge A.
We visit the cargo area and go through the checklist of items that have been set aside for us for our field camp. These include "Arctic Storm" sleeping bags rated to -45C, a couple of "Scott" tents, kitchen kits, several stoves, a Hurdy Gurdy (a device for manually pumping fuel from drums), a personal locating beacon (SARSAT), and so on. Some items we need to collect later, e.g., four 2-person "deep field survival bags".
The field camp supplies in the cargo building. Only about one-third of what you see is for us.
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After all the discussion of altitude sickness, Gamow and survival bags, I'm starting to feel slightly uneasy. I didn't sign up for this when I became as astronomer!
In the afternoon I collect a medical kit from the McMurdo Hospital. The kit contains a variety of prescription drugs and strong pain-killers that we can use at the field camp, provided we first contact the doctors via Iridium satellite phone for medical approval.
At dinner I sit at a table with scientists studying ice cores. These people are doing fascinating work using isotope ratios in ice cores to learn about the history of the earth's climate over the last 100,000 years or so. At some special sites near McMurdo there is 50,000 year old ice close to the surface, and tonnes of it can be collected to make detailed isotope measurements that would not be possible with traditional ice cores.
The kitchen at McMurdo, which cooks for over 1000 people.
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One of the great rewards of visiting McMurdo is random encounters with other scientists and learning a little about the interesting work they are doing.
After dinner I return to Hut Point to take some photos of the seals with my long telephoto lens.
A seal catching some rays on the sea ice near Hut Point, McMurdo.
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A closeup of a seal trying to soak up some sun.
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A seal yawning(?). This is a cropped image from a 300mm telephoto shot, so I was too far away to provoke an attack response, I hope.
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Tomorrow we will embark on a two-day "snow school" where we camp overnight on the ice some kilometres out of town. So don't expect any updates until Sunday evening.
I hope that the weather holds for our camp. Currently the wind is very low, and the temperature is well above zero. You can actually feel warmth from the sun.
Setting up our telescope at Ridge A will involve installing about 1 tonne of equipment at this remote "deep field" site. We expect to have three fixed-wing aircraft flights over 2-3 days to bring in three of us, an experienced mountaineer, survival gear, our equipment, and 800 litres of jet-fuel (to power the telescope for a year).
The aircraft will take us to Ridge A, and then stay for the couple of hours it will take to for us to off-load the cargo. For safety the pilots have to wait until we have set up a tent, got a stove going, and established radio communication. They will then make the four hour trip back to South Pole to pick up more equipment/fuel.
To prepare for the 2-3 days we expect to be at Ridge A, we have to take a two day snow skills and survival course called "Happy Camper". We wonder whether the word "Happy" is actually deeply ironic, but are assured by some people who have done the course that it is indeed enjoyable, although a lot depends on the weather.
There are ten of us on the course - six from our team, and four others. The course starts with several hours of classroom instruction from Brian, our expert teacher. We learn all about hypothermia, risk management, situational awareness, and so on, all enlivened by stories of what has gone wrong in the past.
Brian teaching our class.
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Then we clamber on board a Delta for the bumpy ride to the Happy Camper campsite.
Ten of us on the Happy Camper snow school board a Delta transport vehicle for the 30 minute ride to the camping site.
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The Deltas have seriously wide tires to distribute their weight on the sea ice. That's me wearing 'Big Red', the affectionate name for our Antarctic parkas.
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The final 400 metres is a walk to the campsite. We have to carry about half our gear, the rest is hauled using a skidoo.
Walking out to the Happy Camper site.
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Brian gives us some more instruction in a warm building close to the site, and then its another 200 metres walk to the campsite itself - a flat area on the permanent ice shelf covering the Ross Sea, surrounded by a dramatic landscape of mountains, the closest of which is the rather intimidatingly-named Mt Terror. The slopes of Mt Erebus are visible, but the mountain top itself is still obscured by clouds.
We set out a line of flags, one every ten paces, so that we can find our direction from the camp if conditions deteriorate.
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The wind is moderately brisk, and the first job is to build a wind break out of snow blocks. This involves sawing blocks of snow out of a "quarry" that we establish, and stacking them in a curved wall about a metre high and 15 metres long - enough to protect the entire camp from the prevailing wind, and the expected direction of any incoming storms.
The snow quarrying is energetic work with a saw and shovel, but with ten of us pitching in, we make good progress.
Ice quarrying and wall making.
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We then erect five tents - one Scott tent and four expedition tents - and dig out a nice kitchen area with seating for everyone and a counter-top out of snow for boiling water and making freeze-dried meals.
The Scott tent before erection, on a banana sled for easy transport.
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The Scott tent partially installed. We have to cover the skirts with snow, and then dig eight 'deadmen' in the ice to hold the tent ropes.
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The camp kitchen is dug into the snow, with wind-breaks made of snow blocks.
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A group of us start energetically making snow survival trenches. These are made by digging a trench about 0.5 metres wide, 1.6 metres deep, and several metres long. The sides of the trench are then enlarged under the ice to make areas large enough for people to sleep in. Finally, blocks of snow are added on top to cover the trench. The end result is a very sheltered and satisfactory location for sleeping and/or waiting out blizzards.
Luke and Campbell's luxurious snow trench.
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Another view of the snow trench, showing Campbell after having slept there all night.
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Re-hydrated freeze-dried food made a welcome dinner, along with cups of hot cocoa, and handfuls of "gorp" (which Australians and kiwis call "scroggin" - basically a trail mix of nuts and chocolate).
Craig and I cooking up a storm.
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Dinnertime at Happy Camper.
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Staying hydrated is an important thing to watch for in Antarctica. The air is so dry that you loose a lot of water through breathing. Also, it is easy to use 3-4 thousand calories a day just walking around with the heavy ECW gear and boots, digging trenches, etc. It is recommended to drink at least 3-4 litres of water a day.
In the end, six of us sleep in the trenches that night, one of whom had to retreat to a tent during the night when the roof of the trench collapsed slightly. Of course, when I say "night" you need to remember that the sun is up 24 hours a day here, so it is fairly arbitrary what timezone you use.
I slept in the Scott tent, which was very cosy. Fortunately there was almost no wind during the night, so it was easy to have an uninterrupted sleep - apart from having to get up twice during the night due to my over-enthusiastic hydration.
Inside a Scott tent. There is plenty of room to stand up, and it is quite possible to cook a meal in here.
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A 7am start reveals overcast conditions, and essentially zero wind, which made packing up the camp quite straightforward. By 8:30am the tents were all down, the trenches filled in, and we were ready to head over to the warm hut for some more instruction.
Brian led us through the use of the various VHF and HF radios, and we examined each component of a two-person 3-day "survival bag". We then practiced a couple of scenarios so that we could learn what to do in an emergency.
The first scenario was that we were flying to a deep-field site when the airplane develops a mechanical failure which results in a crash landing. The pilot breaks his leg, the plane bursts into flames, and we have to respond appropriately.
Abram Young, one of our team from the University of Arizona, plays the role of the pilot, and the other nine of us set to work unpacking a survival bag and stabilising Abram inside a sleeping bag in a tent, making some warm food, and so on. Abram made a convincing patient. At about 2 metres in height, he only just fitted inside the tent diagonally.
Abram, our 'injured pilot' is now inside the expedition tent.
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We set up the HF radio and Craig uses it to make actual real contact with the US South Pole Station. They tell us that the temperature at South Pole is -40C - much colder than our relatively warm -7C.
Craig sets up the HF radio to contact South Pole Station.
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Brian appears quite impressed with how well we performed. We were certainly helped by the fact that we had Kelly in our group, one of the two medical doctors here at McMurdo.
The second scenario started back in the warm hut, and we had to imagine that the weather was "Condition 1" (the worst), where visibility was limited to a metre or less. The situation was that one of the team was missing, believed to have been using the bathroom 30 metres away when Condition 1 struck. What should we do?
First we contact (not for real this time) McMurdo by VHF radio and let them know our status. We then discuss how we are going to locate the bathroom in the white-out conditions. Luke is confident that he can find it, so we send him outside with a rope tied around him and a bucket on his head (to simulate the white-out). Luke, true to his word, carefully walks directly to the bathroom (Brian later tells us that this is the first time that anyone has managed to do this), and avoids falling into the 0.5 metre deep wind-scoured trench around it. Unfortunately, when he gets there he doesn't know which side the door is on or how it is latched. Some quick instructions sent by VHF radio fill him in ("bucket-head this is ice-hut, do you read me, over?"), and he verifies that our lost team member is not inside. Luke then returns to the hut by following the rope.
Luke having found the toilet with a bucket on his head, now trying to find the way in.
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After regrouping we decide we should send another person out to check on a nearby gear-storage hut. Campbell volunteers, and is soon heading off into the snow with a bucket on his head. Campbell finds a flag-line, but becomes a little disorientated (very understandably) and ends up falling over a skidoo. Fortunately he didn't injure himself and is able to return to the hut. It is certainly a valuable lesson in realising how difficult it is to find things in the snow with zero visibility.
Campbell seconds before walking into the skidoo.
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Another hour of classroom instruction on snow survival and helicopter procedures, followed by cleaning our equipment, brings Happy Camper to a close at 4pm. We are all tired but certainly more knowledgeable.
Our group of ten successful Happy Campers. From left to right Campbell, Jake, Luke, me, Craig, Lisa, Kelly, Yael, Allan, and Abram.
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At 4:30pm we meet with John Loomis, aka "Loomy", the mountaineer who will be going with us to Ridge A. Loomy is a very impressive fellow, with 28 years of back-country snow camping experience. In a quick-fire 45 minute meeting he expertly leads us through all the questions he needs answering in order to plan the camp. With Loomy on the team, and with the Happy Camper experience behind us, I am feeling somewhat more confident that our goal is achievable.
During one of our class-room sessions, we are told about conditions under which we should not be "driving". Abram mishears this as "deriving" and wonders why these conditions should affect our ability to work on mathematical equations. A true nerd.
At 5:30pm I have dinner, and am fortunate to accidentally bump into Shelley and Vito, two guides who will be leading a 2-hour tour of the pressure-ridges this evening at 6:30pm.
Vito, our friendly and knowledgeable guide.
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Pressure-ridges are areas of broken and jumbled-up ice where the temporary sea-ice near McMurdo meets the immovable solid rock of the island itself.
Seals are able to surface through the cracks in the ice made by the pressure-ridges, and then enjoy basking in the relatively warm air.
The pressure ridges near Scott Base allow the seals to reach the surface.
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The landscape is constantly changing. Just a day or two earlier, this pool of water didn't exist, and the trail (marked by red and green flags) went right across it.
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Yael crossing a difficult bit of the walk, with Campbell behind her.
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A group of us looking at seals (off the photo to the left).
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A seal using a flipper to scratch its tail.
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Having spent the last two days walking around in heavy Antarctic boots, when I put normal shoes on I feel that I could set a record for a 100 metre sprint.
This evening is the 17th annual Women's Soiree at McMurdo, where a number of women on station perform various musical and assorted entertainment. The Galley is packed with several hundred people. I didn't stay for more than the introduction since I was tired from Happy Camper, so I can't tell you how it went.
Sunday is a slow day - although not for Craig and Abram, who are working hard on the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO), a balloon-based experiment that is due to launch from near McMurdo in the next week. STO should ascend to an altitude of about 35km, where it encounters the stratospheric winds that sweep it west and then around the Pole in about 10 days. With luck it will pass close to McMurdo. With even more luck it could make two or three passes around Antarctica before it is finally given the command to parachute the equipment down to the ice. It is then the job of a recovery team to fly out to the site and try to bring back the equipment. The scientific data will have been sent back in real-time during the mission.
The Galley served a delicious brunch from 10am-12pm.
At 2pm, Campbell, Luke and I went on a tour of the Crary Lab, which is the premier laboratory for biology and geology in Antarctica. We saw real-time webcam video from the lava lake inside the Mt Erebus caldera, about 38 km from McMurdo. Apparently Erebus is one of only two volcanoes with an active convecting lava lake; the other is Mt Kenya, and interestingly, is not as accessible as Erebus.
The Crary tour includes a "touch tank" where you can closely examine, and even hold, samples of all sorts of Antarctic sea creatures.
The 'touch tank' in the Crary Lab. The larger tanks in the background are for science projects.
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A closeup of creatures in the 'touch tank'. The green part of the shrimp is apparently its brain; the spider-like creatures have all their internal organs in their legs.
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A giant sea lice. This one is as big as your hand. Normally they are microscopic, but they grow slowly and large in the cold Antarctic waters.
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In the afternoon it starts to snow quite heavily, with large snowflakes up to a centimetre in diameter and with clearly visible classic snowflake appearance.
Snow crystals normally disintegrate immediately upon landing, but this one maintained its shape.
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To wrap up the day, we attended an astronomy lecture in the Galley given by Chris Walker. Chris is collaborating with Craig on the STO balloon-borne telescope experiment mentioned earlier.
Today is our last chance to meet with various critical support people in McMurdo before heading to the Pole. At 9am we meet with the fixed-wing coordinator and discuss how the three Twin Otter flights from South Pole to Ridge A will be scheduled, how much cargo we can carry, and so on. Our flights are scheduled during the week beginning 16 January 2012. We discover that the 800 litres of Jet-A1 that we need has already been air-dropped at a place called AGAP-South, which is about 200 km from Ridge A.
At 10am we meet with MacOps, the McMurdo communication hub, and discuss our communication needs (Iridium satellite phones, HF radio) and protocols for comms. When at Ridge A we have to check-in with MacOps by Iridium phone every morning at 8am. If we miss the check-in, they will try to contact us, and if they are not successful within one hour, a full-scale emergency response is initiated. We don't want to accidentally trigger that, but it is reassuring to have the considerable resources of the US Antarctic Program behind our project.
Our meeting with MacOps to discuss communication. That's Loomy on the left, and Shelly, the MacOps supervisor in bright red. You should recognise the rest of the people by now.
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Currently there are about 200 people at remote sites around the continent, in about 30 field camps. MacOps keeps photographs of all the team members on a noticeboard so that they can put a face to the name when one calls in. Our field camp will be the highest and most remote.
Just before lunch we have another meeting with Loomy to finalise our clothing and survival gear inventory.
In the afternoon we did a 4.6 km loop walk to Gray Dome, on the opposite side of McMurdo to Observation Hill. This afforded sweeping panoramic views, of which the following two photos are examples.
A distant view of the Pegasus runway from near Gray Dome. Close inspection reveals a couple of LC-130s (ski-equipped Hercules aircraft) on the left.
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Finally, a view of Mt Erebus from Gray Dome. The 'cloud' at the summit appears to be coming from the caldera (this is later confirmed to be correct).
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Coming over one ridge I was met by a surprising sight: a very familiar green & gold coloured hut. This was the AASTO: the Automated Astrophysical Site Test Observatory, which was a project that our team at UNSW started way back in 1997. The AASTO spent a few years collecting data at the South Pole, and was originally designed to be taken to Dome A by LC-130.
The AASTO, UNSW's first generation remote observatory, now performing a new role running a radio experiment just outside McMurdo.
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Late yesterday we discovered that we had been bumped from today's flight to the Pole, and will instead go tomorrow.
Interestingly, the three-letter airport code for the South Pole skiway is NPX. The "N" stands for "Navy" and comes from the fact that the South Pole Station was originally established by the US Navy.
I've been reading an interesting book ("Deep Freeze" by Dian Olson Belanger) that details how the US bases were established in Antarctica back in the late 1950's for the International Geophysical Year (1957/58). It certainly makes you appreciate the work of all those early pioneers. The first flights from Christchurch to McMurdo used to take 14 hours (as opposed to five now), which is at the upper limit of the possible range at the time. Four ships were stationed at 400 km intervals towards the end of the flight to give the crew some hope of survival if an aircraft had to ditch in the sea.
Campbell and Luke, by virtue of being New Zealanders, have a special affinity with nearby Scott Base, and have visited it a couple of times during our stay in McMurdo. Each year from about 1957 there has been a rugby match between the two stations, and I am told that the Americans have yet to score a point. The Americans, despite calling themselves the Mt Terror rugby club (after the nearby mountain), can't quite match the blood curdling haka from New Zealand's formidable Maori players.
Later when I see the rugby field on the road to the Pegasus runway, I discover that it only has one set of goal posts. Perhaps this has something to do with the lack of American success?
Today is a beautiful blue-sky day with no clouds and no wind, so I take the opportunity for another hike up Observation Hill and take some photos of the magnificent panorama. Mt Erebus is stunning now that it is completely freed from cloud. Meanwhile, at the summit of Ob Hill, the wind suddenly picks up and I make a hasty retreat down the steep slopes towards warmth.
At 6:30pm we have "bag drag" for tomorrow's flight to the Pole. "Bag drag" is where you have to collect absolutely all your luggage and take it to MCC, the Movement Control Center. Your checked baggage is then weighed and palletised and sent out to the runway, and you get to keep a small carry on bag until your flight leaves. "Bag drag" is a very appropriate name, since MCC is on the top of a significant hill, and the bags are awkward and heavy, particularly when you have to wear your ECW gear and heavy boots for the check-in.
At 7pm we attend a 30 minute safety lecture on recreational travel away from McMurdo. This allows us to visit some of the slighter further afield sites such as Castle Rock - a 10km loop. The trail to Castle Rock is marked by flags and it is imperative not to deviate from it. Some years ago hikers went off the trail on what they thought was a path, but it turned out they were walking directly along a thin layer of snow covering a crevasse - it can look like a trail since the snow tends to sink slightly into the crevasse. After some tens of metres, the snow bridge collapsed and the one of the three hikers fell into the crevasse, becoming wedged in the narrow crack. Fortunately, a rescue team from McMurdo was able to rescue the person.
In another incident in 1986, three hikers decided to take a short cut to Scott Base at the end of the Castle Rock loop. Two of them fell 20 metres into a crevasse, but the third stayed on top and was able to go for help. His companions were dead by the time they were brought back to the surface.
Campbell, Luke and I were up at 5am to clean out our room, pack our used linen away, and prepare for transport to the airfield at 6:45am.
Despite magnificent clear weather and low winds at McMurdo, it appears that everywhere else on the continent has poor weather. After four hours of waiting, all flights are cancelled for the day.
The clearest view we have had of Mt Erebus. It is 38 km away, but looks just 5km. Castle Rock is the squarish outcrop near the centre.
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Campbell, Luke, and Yael hire cross-country skis and head off to the Castle Rock trail at 7pm. They get back at 1:30am after an enjoyable hike, although Campbell declares that it is absolutely impossible to travel downhill on cross-country skis. He has a point, the Castle Rock trail is quite steep and icy, not good conditions for first-time cross-country skiers. With all the talk of crevasses, I am relieved that they all made it back OK.
Rather than hiking in what look like deteriorating conditions, I spent a quite evening working on software for our experiment.
It is our third day trying to get to Pole, and we are starting to get anxious. We have a lot of work to do at Pole, and every day's makes it that much harder for our project to succeed.
Today we aren't even on a primary scheduled flight. There are four LC-130 aircraft leaving today for various camps on the plateau, and we are the backup flight - which means that we only leave if one of the others is cancelled.
The net result is that we have to be on high alert from 6:45am ready to travel to the airfield with 15 minutes notice.
By 11am the weather has deteriorated, and reaches Condition 1 at the airfield. Condition 1 is the worst category of weather here in McMurdo, and means that visibility is cut to metres at best, and you are required to stay in whatever building you happen to be in during the time. At McMurdo itself, we are now in Condition 2, meaning that there is a strong wind, snow, visibility is poor, but it is still possible to walk between the buildings. No off-site travel is allowed.
The weather stays this way all day, and about 30cm of fresh snow is dumped on the town.
By now, our fourth day of delays and living out of our small carry-on bags, our anxiety is increasing. Air operations shut down for the Christmas weekend, and are reduced in intensity from then until New Year. The prospect of twiddling our thumbs here in McMurdo until 1 January, when we have urgent work to do preparing our scientific experiments at Pole, is very frustrating.
Today we are once again listed as a backup flight. But then, at 8:47am I receive an email from the Movement Control Center saying a primary flight has been cancelled so we are going to Pole! I am instructed to be ready for transport at 8:45am. I immediately race back to my dorm room, strip the bed linen, give the room a quick tidy for the next person, throw all my gear into my carry-on bag, and struggle as fast as I can in expedition boots up the hill to MCC by 9:00am. I'm the 2nd last of 12 passengers.
Yesterday's bad weather is behind us, leaving startlingly blue skies and low wind, and we are all optimistic that we will be at Pole for Christmas - apparently a really enjoyable time to be there.
It takes the Delta transport vehicle an hour to lumber across the ice to the airfield, but by noon we are relaxing at the Pegasus PAX terminal investigating the contents of our "Go Picnic" packed lunches. "Go Picnic" contains a mysterious bag of "prime cut beef steak portions" about the size of jelly beans. Some items contain "partially hydrogenated vegetable oils" - making me homesick for Mom's home cooking with fully hydrogenated vegetable oils.
A Caterpillar D8 bulldozer shifting some of the 30cm of snow that fell overnight on the airfield.
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After about an hour, we are scooped up by Shuttle Bob, one of the friendliest people on the ice, and delivered to the door of our ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules aircraft. Thirty minutes later we begin taxiing to the runway.
Our LC-130 aircraft for the flight to Pole, with perfect views to distant mountains, 50-100 km away. The wide-angle lens exaggerates the size of the tail.
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These are ski-equipped Hercules aircraft: they can land on wheel or skis depending on the position of the hydraulically operated skis. Also visible (directly above and to the right of the wheel) are the attachment points for the JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) bottles - which are solid-rocket boosters that give the aircraft an additional kick when trying to take off from high-altitude sites with lots of cargo.
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All aboard in preparation for take-off.
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Inside the LC-130, most of the space packed with cargo, a lot of which was ours.
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The roar of the four turbo-prop engines has to be heard, and felt, to be believed. Initially when the engines start up you think, wow, this is loud. But then you discover that the noise you heard was probably just a fuel pump or a generator. Then the engines start, one at a time. The crescendo of noise is amazing.
And so is the disappointment when the engines throttle right back, and the loadmaster informs us "sorry folks, it looks like we have a small problem with the DVS, we will have to stop and investigate - shouldn't take more than an hour or two".
Hmm... years of experience with airline travel have made me very suspicious that these sorts of delays ever have a happy ending.
It turns out that the "DVS" is an APN-218 Doppler Velocity Sensor, which sounds like a useful thing to have when you are flying into white-out conditions and unknown wind velocities. The DVS should give your absolute velocity with respect to the ice, and assist with judging a landing. A GPS can also give absolute velocity, but isn't so good in the vertical direction. So I'm all in favour of fixing the thing.
Our aircrew sets to work stripping aluminium panels off the belly of the LC-130, and within minutes the DVS is exposed and a call is made to send a backup unit from McMurdo.
Taking the Doppler Velocity Sensor out of the LC-130
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At about 1:30pm, the Delta carrying the backup unit breaks down halfway between McMurdo and the airfield (you can see where this is going, can't you?).
At 2:50pm we have the part, weather conditions are still perfect, everyone is in great spirits, and it is only a 30 minute job to fit the DVS.
Unfortunately, two deadlines are approaching. One is that at 4pm the aircrew have to stand down due to FAA requirements for the number of hours on duty. The second is that unless we leave by 3pm, if we then have to turn back to McMurdo for some reason when we are close to Pole, then by the time we get back, the airfield will be unmanned. Which is a no no.
So, with only 10 minutes available to do a 30 minute job, we are forced to abandon today's flight.
Arrrgghhhhhh!
Back in the transporter, we arrive in McMurdo at 4pm after seven frustrating hours, and with the knowledge that we are now stuck here for at least another two days.
Still, we are relatively lucky: I have heard that the people at the Pine Island Glacier field camp have been waiting for an aircraft for a week or two, and they are down to their survival rations.
And on the positive side there are various pre-Christmas parties around town. Campbell, Luke and Yael head off to Gallagher's Bar, and I venture into the party at the VMF (Vehicle Maintenance Facility - aka the "Heavy Shop").
The pre-Christmas party in the Vehicle Maintenance Facility
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There could be worse days to be stuck in McMurdo: today is Christmas eve, which is when McMurdo has its Christmas dinner. With over 1000 people to make meals for, and with a galley that only seats about 300, we all have to nominate a mealtime of 3pm, 5pm or 7pm. I go for the 7pm slot, which gives me time for the 4km hike around the base of Observation Hill, with expansive views across the Ross Sea ice-shelf, and getting within 50 metres or so of some sun-basking seals.
At the beginning of the hike I come across two skuas. These are largish birds native to Antarctica and with a bad reputation for scrounging food and anything else they can get their beaks onto. Similarly to the Australian magpie, skuas are known to dive-bomb people if you get too close to their nests. And given that a skua is several times bigger than a magpie, you would not want to be on the receiving end of an attack.
Fortunately, the pair of skuas appear to be just curious about me, and I am able to get quite close to take a photo.
A pair of skuas near Observation Hill.
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The term "skua" is used in Antarctica to refer to a place where you put discarded items that you no longer need, allowing other folks to rummage to their heart's content and take what they would like.
Further along the walk I get close to ten or so seals, all aligned in their usual fashion perpendicularly to the incoming sun to maximise the warming effect. It occurs to me that seals would make quite reliable sundials. With ten seals you could work out the sun direction to probably better than 10 minutes in time. It would be great fun to make a time-lapse movie over several hours as the seals occasionally stir from their rest and lugubriously rearrange themselves. I even wonder whether psychologists could study seal behaviour be looking at the average error between an individual seal's position and the sun. Perhaps some seals are always lagging the sun, and others are leading? Perhaps the age/mass of the seal influences how often it reorientates? Perhaps I should stick to astronomy?
The loop trail around Observation Hill cuts across some steep gradients. That is Mt Terror in the background.
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On the steep slopes of Observation Hill some of the finest particles flow down almost like water. This is somewhat reminiscent of structures seen on Mars. The colour appears Martian too.
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Half way around the loop trail I am in the lee of Observation Hill and it is incredibly quiet, as quiet as I have ever known it. Not the slightest sound. With the spectacular clear blue Antarctic sky in all directions. It is experiences like this that make Antarctica so special.
A view across the Ross Sea ice-shelf, with the volcanic rocks of Observation Hill in the foreground.
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After the walk, it is dinner time, and the cooks have put an enormous amount of effort to create a wonderful feast. And lo, there was much rejoicing.
Some of the delicious food on offer for Christmas dinner.
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The McMurdo galley during Christmas dinner on December 24.
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Christmas Day, and a very quiet day with nothing much to do.
Interestingly, I learn that a new record was set today for the highest ever recorded temperature at South Pole: -12.3C. The previous record (apart from a near identical temperature on December 24) was set back in 1978.
Meanwhile at McMurdo the weather is still perfect, so I join Craig and a newly arrived member of the University of Arizona team, David Lesser, for another walk around Observation Hill, this time in the reverse direction.
In the evening we see the launch of a stratospheric balloon - not Craig's STO experiment, that is scheduled for next week. The helium balloon makes a spectacular sight gradually gaining altitude above McMurdo, and then slowly heading westward to being its counterclockwise circumnavigation of Antarctica. In about 10 days, it could pass directly overhead again.
The balloon is only partially inflated at launch, but by the time it reaches it cruising altitude the lower air pressure allows the balloon to greatly expand. Three Boeing 747 airplanes could fit inside it.
A stratospheric balloon launch on Christmas day. The payload weighs about 2 tonnes and is of the order of 3 metres on a side.
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At 7pm it is bag drag time again for the flight tomorrow to South Pole. Will we be lucky and make it to Pole this time?
OK, today is the day.
Due to all the delays we have faced in getting to Pole, our flight is now high in the priority list and is scheduled for an 11am departure. Which means leaving McMurdo at 8:45am. We are all resigned to the usual waiting around and delays, but for some reason things are moving fast today, and we only have to wait 10 minutes before being rushed out to the LC-130.
There we are given a 2 minute very hurried pre-flight briefing. Normally you would think this would be pretty straightforward: "to release the seat belt, lift the buckle... count the number of seats to the nearest exit" - aside: why don't commercial airlines just put a label on each seat saying, e.g., "your nearest exit is 3 rows back", that would save everyone from counting, which no one does anyway.
However, on an LC-130 there are some serious things to learn.
Foremost amongst these is the use of the emergency oxygen. It isn't just a little yellow plastic mask that magically falls from the ceiling. It is a military issue hood in a green bag that you unclip from the railing behind your seat, unfold, and then pull various tags to release chemicals that generate oxygen; you then put the hood over your head and, hopefully, breathe. A side effect of the chemical reaction is that the chemicals get very hot, so you have to be careful not to touch the reaction chamber in the hood.
Apparently the first sign of decompression is that the aircraft immediately fills with water condensation, and then your fellow passengers start to loose consciousness.
An emergency oxygen supply hood in an LC-130.
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Briefing over, the 12 passengers board the aircraft and prepare for take-off. With an explosion of noise we start barrelling down the runway, but after 67 seconds (I was timing) the LC-130 shudders to a halt under reverse thrust. We then turn around and try again in the opposite direction. That also fails.
I'm getting a bad feeling about this.
Fortunately, on the third attempt we manage to lift our front ski and get airborne - nothing will stop us now.
We later learn from the crew that the snow was quite sticky and the wind was across the runway, which didn't help. After the first two attempts, the skis on the LC-130 had made the snow sufficiently smooth that the final attempt was successful. Some deep-field sites have required over a dozen take-off attempts.
The flight to Pole was uneventful and rapid: just 2.5 hours to go from latitude 78S to 90S.
The first hour of the flight took us over the spectacular Trans-Antarctic mountain range, riddled with glaciers and crevasses. It would be enormously difficult to cross this range without the benefit of aerial photography to know what lay ahead.
A typical view during the first hour of the flight to the South Pole. A glacier winds its way over a mountain pass to lower altitudes, forming a treacherous crevasse field at bottom left. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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Inside our LC-130, half-way to Pole. Most of the passengers were at the back looking out through the windows.
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As South Pole gets closer, the air pressure in the plane is reduced so that shortly after landing we will be at the same pressure as ice level, which corresponds to a pressure altitude of about 10,500 feet (3200 metres) today. The pressure altitude can go above 12,100 feet when a low-pressure system passes overhead.
We start adjusting our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear in preparation for the Antarctic conditions: "big red" parka, gloves, balaclava, and ski goggles.
The landing on skis is beautifully smooth, and the LC-130 taxis to within 100 metres of the South Pole station. Upon disembarking, the crew vigorously directs us to the right (left leads into the propellers, which is an easy mistake to make when you are disorientated by the cold, the low air pressure, and the desire to take photographs).
Within 10 minutes we are within the warm station building, and are given our room assignments and briefing notes.
The US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
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The US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is dominated by the "elevated building", which is a two-storey multi-wing structure supported off the ice by a number of large pylons. The elevation is necessary so that wind-blown snow can pass under the building rather than building up against the walls, and ultimately burying it.
The elevated building contains individual sleeping quarters for most of the 240 people on site, as well as a galley, medical centre, science labs, the communications centre, meeting rooms, a greenhouse, library, sauna, a gym, and a few rooms for recreation.
Craig, Abram, and David are staying in the "summer camp", which is a group of half-a-dozen Jamesway shelters about 10 minutes walk from the elevated building.
One of the Jamesway shelters in summer camp.
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The sudden jump in pressure altitude from sea level at McMurdo to 3200 metres has a very noticeable affect on the body. After a few hours I start to get a headache, which fortunately does not develop into more serious altitude sickness. Sleeping is also not easy at altitude, and the extreme dryness of the air can cause nasty skin conditions and nasal problems. A small cut of the skin can take a very long time to heal due to the dry air.
The reason that the air is dry is that the atmosphere is so cold that almost all the water vapour in the air has simply frozen out as ice crystals. In fact, when the temperature drops below -50C, which it will do as the sun begins to set in about six weeks time, the air becomes drier than cylinders of commercial dry nitrogen.
It has been a long and eventful day, but prior to heading to bed we meet with Al Baker, a senior manager on station, and discuss our logistical and cargo needs for the next few days. Continuing a theme that is one of the defining traits of the US Antarctic Program, everyone we meet is keen to help us have a successful mission.
This morning I am feeling pretty rough, having had intermittent sleep and a headache. We are all strongly advised not to exert ourselves during the first couple of days while our bodies adjust.
Another quite noticeable impact of the altitude is that with 30% less oxygen in the air, our brains are not quite as effective as they are at sea level. It is not a pleasant sensation, particularly when you are trying to doing something complex (such as debugging a tricky software problem) that you know you could easily handle at sea level.
In the morning we meet with COMMS (the communications people on station) and discuss our needs for radios and Iridium phones over the next month. I also arrange with Al Baker a way of putting an Iridium aerial on the roof of the station so that I can have 24/7 internet access for controlling our experiments remotely. The internet is otherwise only available at Pole for about 10 hours a day, the times when various decommissioned geostationary satellites peek above the horizon and we can latch onto their still-working radio repeaters.
At 11am the traverse team from McMurdo arrives. This group of 10 or so people left McMurdo 27 days ago in a convoy of tractors pulling hundreds of tonnes of cargo and fuel. Most of the time was spent navigating around the treacherous crevasses on the way up to the plateau. They have to scout ahead with ground-penetrating radar equipped vehicles to find a safe route, and occasionally have to dynamite crevasses to make snow bridges.
In a single traverse they bring in 10% of the station's annual fuel needs, at a fraction of the cost of flying it in.
By 3pm all seven of our team line up at the "garage" for a lesson from "Kiwi Dave" on how to drive a skidoo. Kiwi Dave has a detailed knowledge of the mechanics of a skidoo, and his pre-use checklist involves a very thorough examination of the engine, gearbox, fan-belts, and tracks. The maximum speed that anyone is allowed to drive a skidoo is 15 kph, but just about everyone we see seems to be fanging around at 50 kph or faster. The dial on the speedo goes up to 200 kph, but I strongly suspect that this would only be possible if the skidoo was air-dropped from a Herc.
Kiwi Dave teaches us what to check before operating a Skidoo. Dave is the one with the hat.
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Skidoo lessons.
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Before dinner I take some photos of the Ceremonial Pole, which is a fixed point in the ice, surrounded by the flags of the founding members of the Antarctic Treaty, and the Geographical South Pole a few tens of metres away, which is the point about which the earth rotates - or did rotate on Jan 1, 2011. The ice sheet is moving at about 10 metres per year relative to the rock which is about 3 km below - the Geographical South Pole will be repositioned in a ceremony on January 1, 2012.
The Ceremonial Pole, with the flags of the founding members of the Antarctic Treaty, the 'barber pole' topped with a shiny metallic sphere, and an ice bust of Roald Amundsen which was unveiled by the Norwegian Prime Minister last week.
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A close-up of the bust of Amundsen.
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The Geographical South Pole. The brass marker indicates the position of the Pole at Jan 1, 2011, within a fraction of a metre.
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It is impressive to see that my handheld GPS correctly directs me to the position of the new Geographical South Pole, and I am able to take a photo of it displaying a latitude of S90d 00.000m, with the longitude varying wildly.
Unless there is a seriously well-funded conspiracy, there is no doubt that I really am at the South Pole.
You can't get much further south than this! The GPS is reading S90d 00.000m. The Jan 1, 2011 Geographical Pole is to the right, and the Ceremonial Pole is in the background, even further to the right.
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After the last day and a half of acclimatising, we are ready for our first productive day of working on our actual experiment. In the morning, two of the station crew, ably assisted by Campbell and Luke, erect a "Polar Haven" tent near the Martin A Pomerantz Observatory (MAPO) building. We will be using the tent to assemble the power system for our experiment. The tent provides complete shelter from the wind, and can be heated to above freezing with only a kilowatt of electrical power.
Meanwhile, Yael spins into action and rapidly organises all our electronic and mechanical components, and then starts assembling sub-systems ready for testing over the next few days.
The rest of us are busy on tasks such as bringing a prototype telescope down from the roof of the MAPO building.
MAPO is 0.85 km from the elevated building and is an invigorating walk which we do six times a day (three in each direction). On calm sunny days it is easy, but if the temperature is -25C with a 15 knot wind blowing, it can be a bit more challenging.
Of course, the winteroverers would laugh at -25C. They regularly have to endure temperatures between -60 and -70C.
I have been told that each 10 degree drop in temperature is a "different sort of cold". What you can get away with at -40C, would get you into trouble at -50C.
For example, I can readily walk out to MAPO at -25C just with normal trainers and a pair of thermal socks, as long as I don't stop for more than 20 minutes or so. However, I know from previous experience that at -50C you absolutely need to be wearing the Antarctic-issue thermal boots.
At around -40C you only have about 60 seconds before exposed skin starts to get frostbite.
An example of some Extreme Cold Weather gear. The shoe and glove on the left are fine for -10C; the expedition boot and fur-backed gauntlets on the right are essential for -30C and below.
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One of the main tasks for today was to assemble the solar panels that will provide most of the power for our experiment during the summer time.
We are using standard 195W solar panels, just like the ones that you see on rooftops. These work just fine down to -80C. In fact, they work better in Antarctica due to the low temperatures, and also the snow acts as a handy reflector to boost the amount of sunlight hitting the panels. We can achieve 240W or more from a 195W panel.
Campbell and Luke assembling solar panels (the black square) with our Polar Haven tent to the right, and the 10 metre South Pole Telescope in the background.
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While Campbell and Luke work on the solar panels, the rest of us are assembling and testing electronics.
To conserve water, we are only allowed two 2-minute showers a week here at Pole. The idea is to use the first minute to get wet, then turn the shower off and lather up, then use the final minute to rinse off. I've timed myself at 15 seconds to get wet, and 45 seconds to rinse, thereby allowing showering somewhat more often.
I feel much more human after a shower and a fresh change of clothes.
Water on the station comes from using heat from the main diesel generators to melt ice. This is done in a large underground cavern know as a Rodriguez well, or Rodwell.
Today is windy and overcast, making it much less pleasant to work outside. Campbell and Luke have to spend some hours outside to move the solar panel cube to a new location.
The ultraviolet radiation here is fierce - my UV sensitive glass go darker far more rapidly than they do in Sydney. Of course, with all the gear we are wearing, we are unlikely to get sunburnt, but snow blindness is quite possible if you don't wear goggles.
Progress on our experiment is fast today. We have our 300kg 20kWhr lithium iron phosphate battery pack connected, and our computer systems are on-line and networked to the outside world.
In the afternoon, it is my turn to be a "house mouse", which means I have to spend an hour or so cleaning out the toilet area on my floor of the building. All 240 people on station pitch in and do these tasks, and it helps to build the community spirit.
Another example of community spirit occurred this morning when a couple of large pallet-loads of goods arrived for the kitchen and need to be move up two flights of stairs. Following a station "all call", we quickly had a group of 25 people forming a line to pitch in.
You get used to helping the community like this. I recall when I came out from Pole on an earlier trip I was relaxing at an outdoor cafe in Sydney when a truck turned up to deliver food to the restaurant. I was up out of my seat to volunteer to help, but quickly realised that the gesture would have met with a stunned response, most likely assuming that I was trying to steal the food.
In many ways, the South Pole community is an example of how people can live in harmony. We don't have locks on our doors. Everyone is very helpful. Although I'm sure that there must be a dark side...
At 9:30pm there is a toga party scheduled out in the summer camp. Having had a bad experience at a toga party about 20 years ago (only one-third of the guests were told it was a toga party, another third were gay, and I can't recall what the other third had in common) I decide to give it a miss.
Luke assembling the solar panel cube. Campbell is inside on the ladder.
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The 2nd South Pole Marathon is being held today, beginning at 10am. There are both half and full marathon courses, starting and ending at the Geographical South Pole. Mostly, the course involves running up and down the skiway where the aircraft land, but there are excursions to other places, such as the NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) camp and visitor's center.
Condition were fairly good for the race: clear blue skies, -26C, pressure altitude of 10,500 feet, with a 13 knot wind. The wind is the real killer. Participants have to run with balaclavas covering their noses, else they run the risk of frostbitten lungs, which apparently takes a couple of months to heal and involves lots of coughing.
I am breathing fairly heavily just doing the 0.85 km walk back from the MAPO building. It is hard to imagine that someone could actually run in these conditions.
Four people manage to complete the marathon, two of them had never run a marathon before.
The Dark Sector at South Pole, with a marathon runner about 20 km into the race. The 10 metre South Pole Telescope is the silver dish. Our experiment is under construction in the dark blue Polar Haven tent.
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A woman just completing the half-marathon. The four people cheering her on are manning a drink station.
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A marathon runner, about half-way there. The air temperature was -26C, pressure altitude 10,500 feet, with a 13 knot wind.
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Another popular race at South Pole is the 4 km "Race Around the World", which takes place on Christmas eve. The route literally takes you through all longitudes from 180E to 180W. About 30 people participated this year, and the fastest time was just over 19 minutes - very respectable considering the difficulty of running in powder snow. The fastest man and women in the "Race Around the World" are given the opportunity - flights permitting - to travel to McMurdo to compete in a running race there. They normally win since the training at altitude at Pole gives a huge advantage when back at sea level (note added later: Polies took out first and second place in the McMurdo marathon in early January). You feel like a superman for a few days until the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood returns to normal.
The visitor's center is an interesting development. It is a warm hut about 100 metres from the Geographical South Pole. The idea is to provide somewhere pleasant for the many unofficial visitors at the Pole to congregate. Incredibly there are 91 visitors here for New Year's Day. The numbers are high due to the 100 year anniversary of the first trek to the South Pole - many of them skied the last degree of latitude from 89S to the Pole, a distance of about 110 km.
Apparently its costs about $62,000 per person for the airplane flights and support to ski the last degree of latitude.
Before the visitor's center was erected, there was a lot of pressure from people to enter the US elevated building itself, and to take advantage of the showers, food, and medical facilities. It may sound harsh, but the US Antarctic Program policy strictly forbids visitors in the USAP buildings. With 91 visitors you can see how things could get out of control if they were allowed in.
The visitor's center at the South Pole. 91 people are visiting South Pole at the moment for New Year's Day.
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There are strict guidelines as to where NGO visitors can travel near the station, e.g., they must not go into the "clean air sector" which is an area upwind from the station where scientists take hourly samples of the pristine Antarctic air for climate studies.
Today was a busy day debugging and testing electronics and tweaking software to control our experiment. We have had a few mysterious failures of components, possibly due to static electricity which is a real problem in the dry air here.
Craig, Abram and David are making rapid progress on the telescope hardware and electronics. They are faced with a difficult decision: should they use an existing detector system that is known to work, or should they move the detector into a cryostat in search of a likely factor of 2 or 3 improvement, but with the risk of possibly ending up with a non-working system? They will be wrestling with this problem over the next few days.
At one point in the afternoon I have to use an Iridium satellite phone to call Colin Bonner for advice - Colin designed the printed circuit boards that we are using this year. He informed me that he was relaxing at the beach near Sydney - quite a contrast to conditions here at Pole!
Happy New Year to everyone!
On the first day of the New Year, it is traditional to have a short ceremony to celebrate the annual "moving of the Pole". The Geographical South Pole is roughly fixed with respect to the Antarctic land mass, some 3 km beneath our feet, however, the ice sheet is moving with respect to the land by a quite amazing 10 metres per year. This makes it necessary to reposition the Geographical South Pole marker. The markers are made of brass in the workshops here at the Pole, and are extraordinary examples of artistry and workmanship.
The new Geographical South Pole marker, a work of art.
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Some 40 or so people attend the ceremony at 7pm. Campbell and Luke are both wearing shorts and bare legs under their "big red" parkas. The reason soon becomes clear when they strip off their parkas to reveal singlet tops, and they pose for photographs behind the new South Pole marker.
The 'moving the Pole' ceremony.
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Luke and Campbell experiencing the -24C temperatures (-35C with wind chill).
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Luke and Campbell at the Ceremonial South Pole.
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That's me in the middle, dressed appropriately.
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Meanwhile, today was another busy day of work on our experiment. One of the key things we have to get right is the remote control software, since when we leave the telescope at Ridge A there is no prospect of our returning until a year has elapsed. As part of the test for this, I set up a computer in my room in the elevated building, and I am now able to monitor and control the hardware from my bedroom. When we deploy to Ridge A, the communication link will be via the Iridium satellite network, but for now we are using the extensive computer network that is available at the station.
At 8pm we have a weekly science lecture, today's speaker is Prof. Bill Holzapfel, and he gives a summary of the impressive work being done by the 10 metre South Pole Telescope. This telescope is probing the earliest stages in the life of our universe, when it was only a few hundred thousand years old (compared with 13.7 billion years now).
Next week, Craig and I will be joint speakers at the weekly science lecture.
I learned an interesting statistic: the cost of keeping a person here at the US South Pole station is about the same as supporting someone in an Intensive Care Unit. So we are indeed privileged that our science project has been rated highly enough to warrant this support.
Today was a significant milestone for our experimental work - we connected the "umbilical cable" that joins our Engine Module to our Instrument Module.
I should explain. The telescope we are deploying requires about 200 watts of continuous power to run. During the summer months, this can be easily provided by solar panels, but during the long winter months we reply on two small diesel engines running from jet fuel. The engines are in the Engine Module, naturally enough. The 70 metre long umbilical cable routes the power from the Engine Module to where it is needed in the Instrument Module.
The physical separation between the two modules is needed to avoid water vapour from the diesel engines from interfering with the astronomical observations (and covering our telescope in snow).
The Polar Haven in which we are working. The solar cube is visible.
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Meanwhile, work on the telescope continues apace, and Craig, Abram, and David decide that the new cryostat is working sufficiently well that they can dismantle the old prototype detector, and move across to the new system.
We awake this morning to a beautiful sunny day with almost no wind. The various flags around the station are hanging limp. These conditions are superb for getting work done outside. Even though it is nudging -30C, the lack of wind makes it very easy to stay out for extended periods.
Ridge A has much lower average wind speeds than South Pole, since it is very close to where the katabatic winds originate on the Antarctic plateau. The further you go away from this high-point on the plateau, the windier it gets.
After dinner I am fortunate in having Kara Hoffman and Michael Duvernois giving me a tour of the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA). The aim of this project is to detect extremely high energy "cosmic rays". These are atomic nuclei that are accelerated to astonishing energies by mechanisms that are still unknown. A single such particle can have as much energy as a thrown cricket ball. To put that in perspective, if a tiny dust mote had the same speed as one of these nuclei, then its kinetic energy would be tens of times greater than the largest hydrogen bomb ever tested.
The Askaryan Radio Array will eventually cover about 100 square kilometres close to the Pole, and is typically 100 to 200 metres below the ice. We visit the closest part of the array, some 3 km from the station, and it gives me a small appreciation of what it must be like venturing out onto the Plateau. Normally we do all our work with a kilometre of the station, and there are always people and machinery in view. But out here at ARA, there is a full 180 degree region where you look onto a featureless expanse of ice.
About 3 km from the station, this is the typical view across the Antarctic plateau.
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ARA is actively researching ways of providing power to their array. Distributing electricity from the station's megawatt diesel engines would be costly, so they are investigating whether solar and wind power will meet their needs. It all hinges on whether the wind generators can be made reliable enough to run unattended in the extreme winter conditions.
A solar and wind power station for the ARA experiment.
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The data from the ARA antennas are all sent back to the Ice Cube Laboratory. This building houses the data processing and electronics for the Ice Cube experiment: over 5000 photomultiplier tubes buried up to 2.4 km deep in the ice, searching for neutrino sources in the universe.
The Ice Cube Laboratory.
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One of two large columns containing cables for the Ice Cube experiment.
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Part of the maze of cabling required to link the Ice Cube photomultipliers to the data analysis computers.
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The Ice Cube data analysis computers.
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There are lots of different ways of getting around at the South Pole. Most people walk, but a few ski, and a very few use a bicycle with special snow tires. Some years ago when I was here, a chap brought a unicycle with him, and used it to set a record for the first person to unicycle around all 360 degrees of longitude.
Bicycling at the South Pole.
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A cute little fork lift.
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Apart from our usual work on our instrumentation, today was marked by the erection of a meteorological mast that we will be fitting out with temperature and wind sensors and sending to Ridge A. Campbell and Luke top the mast with a New Zealand All Blacks flag. The mast gets quite a bit of attention from people walking past.
Our meteorological mast goes up.
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Late in the evening I get an Iridium satellite call from Chinese collaborators of mine who have just arrived at Dome A after a gruelling three week traverse from the Zhongshan station on the Antarctic coast. While I am at the South Pole I will be in regular contact the Chinese by Iridium phones and data links as they install a new PLATO module built by our team at the University of New South Wales.
While walking out to the MAPO building this morning, I come across a very energetic person on skis, being pulled along by a parasail. He was cutting backwards and forwards across the wind, and being lifted over a metre into the air at each turn. Wind-assisted skiing is definitely the way to travel across the Plateau. It looks very graceful and lots of fun, although by no means easy.
Having completed the testing of the individual components, it is now time to put the Engine Module outside the Polar Haven to test the entire system. This takes most of the day and tomorrow.
Inside our Polar Haven tent, showing PLATO-R under test.
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Just before dinner I venture onto the roof of the elevated building (under the close supervision of Al Baker - the roof is normally a no-go area due to the risk of slipping over the edge) to locate a suitable access duct for an Iridium aerial. We can't find one, but we do find an Iridium aerial already mounted, and closer inspection inside the station revels that it is available for our use.
Having my own Iridium connection from the station will allow me to have continuous access to the Internet, and from there I can login and control our experiment when it is deployed to Ridge A next week.
Immediately after dinner we hold a team meeting to discuss our progress to date and the work still to be done between now and leaving for Ridge A. Craig, Abram and David are making very solid progress on the telescope, and the UNSW team is happy with work on the engines and electronics.
After the meeting we are ready to run the engines. One of them starts nicely, but the other sounds rather sick and stops quite suddenly after just a few seconds of operating. We will have to take the engine out and examine it tomorrow.
Adding the gear plate to the Engine Module.
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Closing the Engine Module lid.
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The Engine Module in its completed form. The bottom half contains 800 litres of AN-8 (an Antarctic blend of kerosene); the top half contains two diesel engines and control electronics.
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Campbell and Luke spend this morning pulling the misbehaving engine out of the Engine Module and bringing it back inside the Polar Haven for testing.
After lunch the true horror of the situation is revealed: the engine has bent both its push rods and broken the rocker that activates the intake valve. We speculate that the exhaust valve may have stuck closed, perhaps related to the cold temperatures - although the engine should have been at around -10C, which is not an unreasonable temperature.
While there is no chance of repairing the engine before next week, fortunately we have a spare one with us for just this kind of eventuality, and Campbell and Luke labour long into the "night" to swap it in. Meanwhile, Yael is working hard on the cabling for a 15 metre meteorological mast that will sit next to our experiment.
Being Saturday, the chefs have a break and the meals are prepared by various groups of mechanics, scientists, managers, etc. You never know what you might get. Today the food is really very good, with excellent pizzas.
This evening is the annual South Pole Meteorological Wine and Cheese Party. For a moment I feel guilty sipping wine for an hour while Campbell and Luke are struggling with the diesel engines - but only for a moment. About 60 or so people attend the party, and it was a most enjoyable time. I met this year's winterover station manager, Katie, who has wintered twice before.
I heard an interesting story of a similar vodka-fueled party, that occurred at Vostok station in April 1980. Some hours after the party finished the station's diesel engine plant burned down. This would normally have meant almost certain death for the station crew, if it hadn't been for their extreme resourcefulness in the manufacturing of fuel heaters, and digging out and repairing old abandoned generators to restore the electricity supply.
The poster for our weekly science talk, scheduled for tomorrow.
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Today would have been Elvis' 77th birthday, so we celebrate by having an Elvis-themed Sunday brunch.
Yesterday's transplant of the spare diesel engine has worked well, and we now have a fully functional Engine Module ready for thermal testing.
We turn our attention to the Instrument Module, which is now essentially in a complete state, just undergoing final testing and software tweaks.
The PLATO-R Instrument Module, almost fully installed.
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Another view of the PLATO-R Instrument Module.
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The University of Arizona team are working very long hours to finalise the telescope detector system, and so far everything is going smoothly.
The telescope is called HEAT, High Elevation Antarctic Telescope, and is quite unlike any telescope you would have seen before. Rather than taking optical images like a traditional telescope, HEAT observes terahertz radiation - between the infrared and radio parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
David, Abram and Craig, with the telescope detector system.
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Not much is known about what the universe looks like when observed with a terahertz telescope, since the earth's atmosphere is so opaque to this radiation that essentially nothing reaches the ground from space.
Except, that is, at Ridge A, and the surrounding few hundred kilometres on the Antarctic plateau. Here the water vapour content of the air is so low that the terahertz radiation from astronomical objects does reach all the way to the ground. There are good theoretical reasons to believe that we will learn a great deal about how stars are formed through terahertz observations of the cocoons of molecular gas from which the stars evolve.
At 8pm Craig and I give the South Pole weekly science lecture to an audience of about 60 people on the subject of HEAT and PLATO-R.
Craig starting off our South Pole weekly science lecture in the galley.
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An "airdrop" is where an aircraft flies over the station and, rather than landing, drops cargo using parachutes. This isn't all that useful during summertime, where it is easier just to land an LC-130 on the ice. But during winter, when it is not possible to land due, to the low ground temperatures which freeze the aircraft's hydraulics, an airdrop can be the only way of getting urgent cargo such as medical supplies to the Pole.
For the last week, a C-17 aircraft has been waiting at Christchurch for the weather to be good enough for an airdrop. The C-17 will fly non-stop to Pole, drop its cargo, and then head back to Christchurch.
Early this morning, after several false starts, the C-17 started its long journey south, and just after breakfast a group of 50 of us waited about 0.5km from the station to witness the airdrop - by all accounts it can be quite spectacular.
Folks gathering to watch the C-17 airdrop.
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Within 5 minutes of the appointed time, we heard the thundering roar of the C-17 engines. Somewhat concerning, there was a fairly thick layer of cloud, perhaps 300 metres above the ice. We saw signs of the contrails from the aircraft in the clouds, but then the thundering roar petered out and we heard the announcement "the airdrop is cancelled".
Apparently the C-17 made a pass over Pole, couldn't see the ground from 1000 feet, so turned around and went back to Christchurch. Disappointing, but those are the safety regulations.
Coincidentally, a Twin Otter landed a few minutes later, and the fifty of us waved at it - the pilot would have wondered why we had all made the effort.
A Twin Otter just about to touch down on the skiway.
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Walking back to the station we pass through the cargo berms where "stuff" is stored, possibly for future use, possibly for eventual "retro" north.
Some of the cargo berms near the station.
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I discover later in the day that the bacon that has been served in the galley for the past week was recently found on the berms, and dates from 2003! It did taste a little odd.
One of the two satellite stations for communications. This one is for the NASA TDRSS system.
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Moving snow to stop buildings being covered is a never-ending job.
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While we continued work on our experiment, a couple of skiers were just making it to Pole after having spent 64 days retracing Amundsen's route from 100 years ago. One of these skiers will give us an evening lecture in days to come (see the entry for January 16).
Precipitation at Pole comes in two forms: smallish snowflakes or "diamond dust". The latter are extremely small cylinders of ice that glint brightly when they reflect sunlight. If you have sufficiently large numbers of these cylinders present, then you can get a series of beautiful halos around the sun. The earliest to appear are "sun dogs" - bright monochromatic patches at a fixed angle from the sun. As the diamond dust intensity increases, so does the complexity of the phenomenon, with all sorts of additional arc, inverted parabolas, rainbows, and so on.
Today, for a period of about 10 minutes, conditions were perfect: a deep blue sky for contrast, no clouds, and large quantities of diamond dust. We witnessed the best display of atmospheric effects that I have seen. I didn't have my super-wide angle lens with me, so I couldn't do full justice to the event, but hopefully these photos will give you some impression.
Luke blocking the sun, with an incredible display of ice halos around him.
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The uppermost halo in the previous image. Individual particle of "diamond dust" are visible.
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Another view of the ice halos.
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A rarely-seen faint line due to the ice halos, here seen well over 90 degrees from the sun, and continuing for the full 360 degrees.
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At lunchtime we say goodbye to Yael and David whose time at Pole is now up. They both made invaluable contributions to the project.
The LC-130 taking David and Yael back to McMurdo.
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The flight they are leaving on brings in Loomy, our mountaineer guide who will accompany us to Ridge A.
Loomy is basically an Alaskan version of Bear Grylls - the British survival expert and daredevil extraordinaire.
Loomy has some great stories to tell, including how some years ago there was a medical emergency at Pole in mid-winter, and he was part of a small team of people (including a surgeon) who were to make a mid-winter airdrop (cargo and themselves) over the station. At the last minute, the plan was cancelled when a Twin Otter aircraft was able to land at Pole and take the stricken person back out to safety. The Twin Otter has the advantage over larger aircraft in that it doesn't use hydraulics to operate its control surfaces, and so could land at temperatures well below -50C. Still, the incoming crew had to face the real prospect of having to spend five months on the ice if they couldn't take off again.
Talking of aircraft problems, last night an LC-130 was doing pre-flight checks prior to leaving Pole when it was discovered that its ailerons and tail rudder were inoperative. This is a very serious malfunction, and if it occurred during flight you would be reaching for a parachute. For the time being, this Herc will be staying at Pole for repairs.
The LC-130 with mechanical problems, parked at Pole. The two radomes house microwave dishes for communication with near-geostationary satellites.
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At 7am each morning the Twin Otter pilots meet at COMMS and receive their flight instructions for the day. There are multiple options available, depending on weather, and everything coalesces into a plan at 7am.
This morning there is bad weather at several sites, so we are given the go-ahead to take four drums of fuel to Ridge A. When we catch up with the Pilot a couple of days later we discover how this routine operation turned into an adventure - but more of that in the January 13 entry.
A important milestone is reached in the afternoon with the HEAT telescope joining PLATO-R in the Polar Haven tent. We now have a complete system to test, and things are looking promising.
Meanwhile, I am involved in some additional work on the side which I haven't told you about. PLATO-R is just the latest of our PLATO remote observatory systems on the Antarctic plateau: we have PLATO-F in collaboration with Japan at Dome F, and the original PLATO and PLATO-A in collaboration with China at Dome A. In all we have four of these remote systems, and one of the things I do is write the software and keep track of their day-to-day performance.
PLATO-A is particularly tricky, since that was newly built at the University of New South Wales late last year and is being installed by a Chinese traverse team at Dome A (about 150 kilometers from Ridge A) right now. We only had a few days to test the software before shipping.
Supporting the Chinese at Dome A involves me in numerous Iridium phone calls to Dome A and lots of delicate communication with the PLATO-A computers to make sure that the experiment is stable and working correctly. An example of what can go wrong is if a diesel engine is started without proper software in place to monitor temperatures and battery state-of-charge, it is easy to irrevocably damage something. Working on this from my room in the station over two slow intermittent Iridium links (one from South Pole to the ground-station in Hawaii, the other from Hawaii to Dome A) is quite a strain.
Andrew, one of the station's diesel mechanics, visited the Polar Haven today and cast his expert eye over our two little diesel engines. When going flat-out, we can generate about 3kW of electrical power. Andrew is used to the working on the megawatt diesels that generate power for the station.
When the station's power plant was first commissioned, it was level with the surrounding ice. But some 20 years later it is now almost entirely buried under the snow.
Andrew has promised me a tour of the power plant, so for all you diesel aficionados out there, expect some more photos and discussion soon.
The megawatt diesel power plant for the station is buried under the snow.
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While tweaking the throttle settings of our diesels in the afternoon, we happened across a problem that we hadn't seen before: the alternator output voltage is just a little too high for the controller unit when the batteries are at their lower voltage limit, with the result that we can't control the load on the engine. The only workaround is to run the engines slightly slower than we would like.
And another surprise: the exhaust gas thermocouple on one of the engines becomes intermittent - fortunately we have a spare and are able to swap it in fairly quickly.
Sorry to dwell on all these instrumental minutiae, but these are the typical sorts of issues and failures that we have to deal with. The real skill in designing PLATO-R to operate remotely for a year is to build in sufficient redundancy, and sufficient re-configurability, to be able to cope with problems as they arise during the year. With our original PLATO at Dome A, which has operated continuously for over three years now, we have had numerous electrical and mechanical issues, but in all cases we have been able to reconfigure the software to cope.
The weather today was rather miserable. Lots of low cloud which had the effect of making it very difficult to discern the boundary between the snow and the sky.
White out conditions. Somewhere in the middle of the photo is the boundary between the snow and the sky. The black rectangles are skiway markers.
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This morning at breakfast I met up with Gary, the Twin Otter pilot who will most likely take us to Ridge A. Gary and his co-pilot took four drums (800 litres) of AN-8 fuel to Ridge A for us two days ago..
The trip turned into quite an adventure that they do not want to repeat.
The snow surface looked satisfactory from the air, but turned out to be very bumpy when they landed. So much so, that after unloading the drums of fuel they were unable to take off. Closer inspection revealed that the surface consisted of an icy crust of variable thickness over a powder base. Gary surmised that the very low air speed at Ridge A allowed the snow to be warmed by the sun, to the point where it started to solidify somewhat. But the real issue was that the ice patches formed undulating bumps that made it impossible to reach take-off speed.
There was nothing for it but to manually dig out a runway - Gary and his co-pilot spent the next three hours using shovels to take the icy patches off 500 metres of runway. At a pressure altitude of 4480 metres (14,700 feet) this was not an easy task. With a full load of passengers the Twin Otter would need over 900 metres of runway.
This presents us with a problem: we will now need to take a snow groomer (a mechanical device that attaches to a skidoo) in to Ridge A before we can take our team in. And in a twist of fate, the only suitable snow groomers at Pole were returned to McMurdo last week, which means that we will have to wait for an LC-130 flight to bring them back. And we will need to get permission from the NSF to have an additional Twin Otter flight to deploy our experiment.
Another problem surfaced in the afternoon: the three Iridium modem SIM cards that we will be using to control our experiment remotely have a subtle problem with their "provisioning". The bottom line is that our modems will not make an internet connection to the Iridium ground-station. We hadn't realised this problem before since we are in a radio-quiet area of the station and we have to obtain special permission to test the satellite communication.
Fortunately, a few urgent emails to the appropriate people in the US resolved the situation, and we were on-line late in the evening.
Walking back to the elevated building around midnight, I took a photo of the entrants in the ice sculpture competition - some large blocks of snow have been dumped near the station, and several teams of people are competing for the best sculpture, using electric chainsaws and slower manual techniques. So far, the winner looks to be the giant couch, with a dummy dressed in Extreme Cold Weather gear, but the shark looks pretty good too.
The ice sculpture competition.
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With the discovery of the unexpectedly poor runway conditions at Ridge A, Craig is busy writing emails this morning to the Fixed Wing people in McMurdo to make sure that our deployment is not affected. We will need one more Twin Otter flight, which, in a heavily constrained schedule, is asking a lot.
There are suggestions that we change our site to AGAP South, which is an established camp a few hundred kilometres away, but Craig restates the scientific evidence that points to Ridge A as being significantly better.
Craig's logic wins the day, and all stops are pulled out in an effort to send a snow grooming machine to Pole as soon as possible.
At lunch I sit next to a chap who it involved in straightening the hole going to Rodwell number 3. To explain, the station gets its fresh water by melting ice in underground caverns known as Rodwells, after Army engineer Paul Rodriguez who first came up with the idea http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/rodwell/rodwell.html. Once a Rodwell is started, it doesn't take too much energy to keep a large "bulb" of water in a liquid state.
The water we are drinking here would have fallen as snow around 1000 years ago.
The station is currently using Rodwell number 2. Number 1 is used for waste water and sewerage. Number 3 is being prepared for use as a drinking water supply, and this involves straightening the 70 metre shaft that leads to the cavern. The engineers lower a heated 250 kilogram weight into the shaft, and gravity naturally melts the hole in the desired direction.
Today being Saturday, it is Banjo Night at the Pole, where a jovial group of several dozen "Polies" get together, bring along any banjos they can find, and then run over them with D8 Caterpillar bulldozers.
Only joking.
But that gives me the opportunity to mention that there is a thriving program of recreational activities here at Pole, with live music, barn dancing, volleyball, movies, etc.
The South Pole greenhouse.
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Today, finally, after weeks of waiting for suitable weather conditions, Craig's Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO) balloon experiment was launched from McMurdo. STO will have a mission lifetime of up to two weeks as it is naturally blown around the continent by the winds of the Polar vortex, eventually coming back close to its starting location. All indications are that the instrument performance is - in NASA speak - "nominal", i.e., nothing has actually caught fire yet.
Meanwhile, at Dome A, my Chinese colleagues are having trouble with starting some engines in our PLATO-A module. It turns out that an incorrect thermistor that measures the alternator temperature has instructed the computer not to start the engines (basically because the computer thinks that the alternator is just about to melt, when in reality it is quite cool). We try various software fixes during the day, but in the end the simplest approach is just to snip the thermistor out of circuit - this works, and PLATO-A is on-line later in the day.
In the evening we have an absolutely brilliant Science Lecture by Clement Pryke, of the University of Minnesota, on an experiment called SPUD that he is co-leading at Pole.
SPUD is an ambitious program with the goal of detecting "B-mode polarisation in the cosmic microwave background". That probably won't mean anything to you, but put another way, if SPUD makes the detection, then it will have found evidence for gravity waves in the universe when it was only 400,000 years old. That also sounds pretty complex, and the best I can quickly tell you is that this is one of the Holy Grails of cosmology, and would be an important piece in the puzzle in understanding how our universe came into being. You can't get much bigger picture than that.
Clem's talk was riveting, and I was not surprised to learn later that he had won a teaching award at the University of Chicago a few years ago.
The sky was crystal clear this morning, and we were rewarded with a nice view of the waning moon. At the South Pole, the moon is up for two weeks continuously, and then down for two weeks, and so on. It takes some time to get used to the strange consequences of being at latitude 90S.
The sun, of course, is up in the sky all the time at the moment. It is very slowly spiralling down towards the horizon, which it will meet at the equinox on March 20. At the Pole the sun takes a day or two to finally disappear below the horizon, and will not reappear for another six months.
As the sun's altitude decreases during late January and February, so does the average daily temperature - at a rate of about 1 degree Celsius each day.
Today was time for our team to take stock of progress and ensure that we were on schedule for a possible deployment this week. As soon as the runway at Ridge A has been groomed - which could occur as early as January 18 - our experiment could be on the next plane out. We must be ready.
Fortunately, Craig reports that our HEAT telescope is in rather good shape. Given the substantial risks taken in disassembling and reassembling the detector from the working prototype instrument a mere 2-3 weeks before the Twin Otter flight, the gamble has paid off, and we find ourselves in possession of the most sensitive 55 Kelvin 810 GHz heterodyne receiver on the planet. The performance improvement will make our experiment ten times faster at mapping the sky than it would otherwise have been.
After dinner we attended an evening lecture given by Lt Col Henry Worsley of the Royal British Legion. Henry was the leader of the 2008-2009 Shackleton Centenary Expedition recreating Shackleton's Nimrod journey that came within 112.2 miles of the South Pole - the furthest south until Amundsen's expedition. Shackleton's route was essentially the same as the one that Scott took when he reached the Pole on January 17, 2012.
Remarkably, Henry arrived at the South Pole just last week after having retraced Amundsen's route. He was with one other person, and they man-hauled all their provisions and equipment.
So, Henry has essentially retraced the two most famous journeys to the South Pole: Amundsen's and Scott's. This gives him a unique perspective on the accomplishments of the two explorers.
His talk was riveting (all the talks seem to be good here, maybe it is the altitude?). He compared the two journeys, with excerpts from the diaries of Scott and Amundsen, and illustrated with photos from his own trips. A highlight was when he climbed Mt Betty to find a cairn and a container of paraffin that Amundsen had placed there one hundred years ago - this gave a tremendous feeling of connection with the great explorer.
Henry also showed side-by-side comparisons of photographs taken in 1912 with those of today - there is essentially no visible difference. At least climate change hasn't yet had an obviously discernible influence on the interior of the Antarctic continent.
Before heading to bed we receive an update on the skiway grooming situation. Our "groomer" - the person who will operate the grooming machine - is Shawntel, and she is currently at the AGO-1 field camp. If the weather cooperates she could be flown to Pole tomorrow, and have the skiway ready at Ridge A by Wednesday.
Shawntel, who operates the snow-grooming machine for making runways.
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The 10 metre South Pole Telescope, in the "Dark Sector" at the South Pole.
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Gazing out over the plateau from the galley at breakfast time I notice a group of five newly arrived expeditioners taking "hero photos" of themselves out by the Ceremonial Pole. Nothing unusual there, except that these folks had taken the Australian flag and raised it a metre into a position of prominence. Suspecting that they might be fellow Aussies, I clambered in to my Extreme Cold Weather gear and went to say g'day.
They turned out to be fellow Sydney residents who had skied the last degree of latitude (111km) to the Pole, raising money for the Humpty Dumpty Foundation - an Australian charity for providing equipment to children's hospitals. They were all obviously excited to have arrived at the Pole, and were none the worse for wear. They will be flying out tomorrow or the next day.
Meanwhile, having learned from Andrew, a kiwi diesel mechanic at Pole, that one of the station's three 1MW diesel engines is currently stripped-down for maintenance, I can't resist a quick visit to the power plant.
The diesel power plant.
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Engine number two undergoing routine maintenance.
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The power plant is the most critical part of the station's infrastructure. It provides heat, electricity, and - indirectly through melting ice - water. If the power plant went down, life here would become very difficult within a matter of days. It is reassuring to have people like Andrew keeping the power plant in top shape.
A single fuel injector for the station's diesel engines.
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The station needs only one of its three big diesels to survive. Each can pump out 1.2 megawatts of power at sea level, which has to be de-rated to 750 kilowatts at altitude. There is an additional supplementary engine to cope with peaks in demand, and there is an entirely separate backup power plant in the elevated building, just 20 metres from my bedroom, to cope with a catastrophic loss of the main engines. A lot of thought has gone into making us safe.
Today was a busy day preparing to ship our experiment. We have to move everything about a kilometre from our work area at MAPO over to the "flight line" where cargo is staged ready for the Twin Otters. There we plan to turn the experiment on and conduct a full-scale test of the remote operation of PLATO-R. I will be running it from a computer in my bedroom, using two Iridium satellite links (one from Pole to UNSW, the other from UNSW to PLATO-R) to make contact. Due to radio noise restrictions that apply near MAPO, this is the first time we have been able to conduct such a test.
Prior to moving PLATO-R we attend a ceremony at the Geographical South Pole to mark the 100th anniversary of Scott's triumph in reaching the Pole, and the tragedy of his later death. The ceremony lasted about half an hour, and included a particularly memorable and moving speech by Lt Col Henry Worsley (the chap who gave the evening lecture last night). A documentary television crew, I believe from the BBC, filmed the proceedings. I'm the one wearing the red parka :-)
At the conclusion of each of the half-dozen speeches, the audience of almost 100 applauded, making an unusual sound with everyone wearing thick gloves.
The ceremony at the Geographical South Pole to mark Scott's 100th anniversary.
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Campbell and Luke completed packing PLATO-R at 10:40pm, and it was then moved by tractor to the flight line.
The PLATO-R Instrument Module loaded onto an Air Force pallet near MAPO.
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PLATO-R (extreme right) being moved by tractor to the "flight line" near the station.
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We have now assembled all the equipment and people we need for the snow-grooming flight to Ridge A. Loomy and Shawntel are ready and eager to be dropped in to prepare the skiway.
I suggest to Loomy that given that Ridge A is only 30 metres or so lower in altitude than Dome A, that if he could make a sufficiently large hill of snow he could claim the highest point on the Antarctic plateau! I'm sure that this wouldn't overly please the Chinese who are establishing a permanent base 150 kilometres away at Dome A.
Testing PLATO-R near the flight-line has uncovered one problem: the observatory doesn't automatically make Iridium satellite contact as expected. Debugging this isn't easy. The outside temperature is -30C and there is a moderately stiff breeze blowing. We have a small computer monitor in the Instrument Module, but it is hard to see in the dazzling polar sunlight. Also, typing on a keyboard at -30C requires using the lightest mittens, which means that I have only a few minutes before I have to retreat to a nearby aircraft maintenance shack to warm up. All in all, it takes me two hours, with painfully cold fingers, before I fix a problem that would have taken 10 minutes or less under normal conditions.
That's me typing away on a keyboard inside the Instrument Module. Campbell is in the foreground. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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At 7am this morning, Loomy and Shawntel learn that conditions are perfect for the camp "put-in" at Ridge A.
The flight information displayed on the "galley scroll" showing our first flight (KBC heading to AGAP-Ridge A).
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With the snow-grooming machine, skidoo, the minimal safety equipment for a camp, and passengers, the flight weighs almost exactly one tonne. This is 10-20% heavier than the normal conservative take-off weight limit for a Twin Otter from Pole, but still possible.
The flight is uneventful, and by early afternoon Shawntel is busy making a kilometre-long skiway, while Loomy is digging out a camp kitchen and setting up tents. Shawntel works for eight hours straight, and is reluctantly convinced to stop by Loomy's entreaties to join him for a warm evening meal.
Fortunately, enough of the skiway preparation was complete by then, since the following morning they were unable to restart the skidoo, which had cooled down to -40C overnight.
Meanwhile, back at Pole, we were all busy with final packing and checks of the instrumentation to be ready for our first flight, which could be as early as tomorrow morning.
The journey, from Sydney to Ridge A. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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At the 7am briefing we hear that weather conditions are perfect today, both at Pole and Ridge A, which means that our flight is on!
The pre-flight briefing in COMMS.
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I have decided to stay at Pole so that I can handle the remote communication with the observatory once it is set up. Another complicating factor leading to this decision is that my Chinese colleagues at Dome A are leaving on January 24, a few days earlier than planned, and it is essential that I am in good contact with them over the next few days. So Craig, Campbell and Luke will be the deployment team at Ridge A, assisted by Loomy.
At 7:30am we rendezvous at the aircraft to assist with packing the cargo. Our top priority is to take the solar panels and the PLATO-R Instrument Module so that we can have the experiment powered up and communicating via Iridium as soon as possible. The Instrument Module fits in the Twin Otter with only centimetres of clearance, as designed. With three passengers and the cargo, we are once again nudging the maximum allowed take-off weight.
The PLATO-R Instrument Module being loaded into the Twin Otter by fork-lift. It is a very neat fit.
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About 1 tonne of cargo, but still plenty of room for passengers.
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All packed and ready to fly to Ridge A.
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Luke, Craig, and Campbell ten minutes from take-off.
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At 8:50am the Twin Otter takes off for the 2.5 hour trip to the AGAP-South refueling stop. It is then another 1.2 hours to Ridge A.
For the next three days I am basically cut off from the rest of the team. To communicate we have a simple email-like system using the PLATO-R computer, and Iridium phones.
At 6pm the Twin Otter returns to the Pole and I meet the pilot and co-pilot where they refuel on the side of the skiway. Everything went smoothly, and there weren't any dramas extracting the cargo at Ridge A. It was cold (-38C), but with a low wind (5 knots), so conditions were quite reasonable for outside work.
Two hours later I receive the tell-tale signal that PLATO-R is alive and communicating on the Internet. This allows me to login to the Instrument Module computer and run some tests - everything is looking good.
Another perfect flying day today, and after the usual 7am weather briefing, I head out to the aircraft to assist the pilot and co-pilot to load the cargo. This was a strenuous process despite having the help of a forklift to raise the boxes roughly 1.4 metres to the height of the Twin Otter deck. Of course, at Ridge A my colleagues won't have the luxury of a forklift, but at least they have gravity to help them.
In my hurry to race out to help with loading the aircraft, I left my normal gloves behind, and the only ones I now have are thin leather mittens. This makes the 45 minute process quite an ordeal, and I keep my fingers from frostbite by occasionally grabbing hold of the exhaust pipe of the diesel engine being used to warm the aircraft engines.
When we were planning the cargo on-load/off-load back in Sydney, we were wondering how many people we would need and whether we could expect any help from the pilots. One school of thought was that the pilots wouldn't want to get involved in man-handling the cargo. Fortunately this was far from the case, and our pilots could easily have held down summer jobs as piano movers.
Our pilot, Gary, climbing out over the 350kg Engine Module after having loaded it into the Twin Otter.
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The final component, the HEAT telescope itself under the blue fibreglass shell, is loaded.
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Another worry we had during the planning process was unloading the cargo at Ridge A. We were told that there was a special off-loading ramp for the Twin Otters, but try as we might we could get no technical data on the ramp. Would it collapse under the weight of 300 kilograms of batteries? For future reference I took some photos of the ramp. And yes, it is capable of supporting 300 kilograms, but perhaps only just.
The Twin Otter off-loading ramp.
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After watching the Twin Otter take off, I trudge out to the MAPO building and begin the process of preparing the Polar Haven tent for disassembly and tidy up the huge mess we had made over the past few weeks. I also work on Gattini-SPUV, which is an ultraviolet imaging camera experiment on the roof of MAPO that I am involved with.
It is frustrating to be isolated from the rest of the team and not knowing what is happening at Ridge A. I try phoning them several times, but their phones are not on. I send four emails to the PLATO-R computer, but get no response. I later learn that the cold temperatures meant that the Iridium phones were almost impossible to use, and that Craig was in fact replying to my emails but a confusion in the naming convention meant that I didn't see them.
Later in the day I can see that the PLATO-R batteries are connected and being charged by the solar panels. This is huge relief, as the batteries are the most critical part of the experiment. There are 120 individual cells, and 36 microprocessors monitoring their voltages. If we lose the ability to monitor even one cell, which can easily happen through static electricity damage, then it severely compromises the performance of the experiment.
Another exciting development is that we now have seven webcameras running at Ridge A, as well as an all-sky fisheye camera called HRCAM3 (High Resolution Camera number 3). I download some images and eagerly pore over them, looking for clues as to how the installation is going. While webcameras are not directly related to the science, they provide useful diagnostic information such as is the HEAT telescope covered in snow?
An image from one of the seven webcameras on the roof of the Instrument Module, showing the HEAT telescope. The device on the pole in the foreground is a flashlight that can be used to illuminate HEAT when it is dark.
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The "Galley scroll" showing an HRCAM3 all-sky image from Ridge A.
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The campsite, with the observatory partially deployed. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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In COMMS in the morning I look out the windows that give a panoramic view of the plateau to see a couple of people on bicycles approaching the Ceremonial Pole. You get used to seeing all sorts of crazy things here.
The bicyclists turn out to be Helen Skelton and her travelling companion Niklas Norman http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/diaries/helen-skeltons-polar-challenge-for-sport-relief who have just completed a 500 mile journey to the Pole using bikes, skies, and kite-skis. Helen is a presenter for the famous British children's television program Blue Peter. They are raising money for the charity Sports Relief.
I hurriedly put on my ECW gear and race down to the Ceremonial Pole to meet the adventurers and take some photos. They were both clearly very tired from the enormous physical effort they have put in over the last month. Helen has a nasty cough, which might be due to slightly frostbitten lungs. Despite this, she surprised me by jumping off her bike and almost sprinting across to the Geographical Pole for photos.
Helen Skelton and Niklas having just skied, biked, and kite-skied 500 miles to reach the Pole
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A photo of Helen Skelton from the BBC website. That's me (the straight red figure second from the left) reflected in the shiny sphere.
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A close-up of Niklas and Helen at the Ceremonial Pole.
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The choice of bikes as a mode of transport is a dubious one. If the snow surface is icy and hard, then low-pressure bike tires can work well. But on many places on the plateau, and near the South Pole in particular, the snow is dry and powdery - it you pick it up in your gloved hands it just flows through your fingers like fine sand - which makes wheeled transport very inefficient.
At the same time that Helen and Niklas were cycling in, three Toyota Hiluxes from "Extreme World Races" turn up. According to their website they are "pioneers of ultra-endurance, multi-disciplinary and extreme adventure sports in the most hostile environments of sea, land and air on the planet."
To avoid crevasses the lead truck used a ground-penetrating radar on a boom about 5 metres ahead of it. I was chatting to one of the drivers, and he told me that they had a lot of trouble with crevasses the first year they drove from the coast, but since then they have found an essentially crevasse-free route.
Three Toyota Hiluxes, having driven from the coast.
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The tires are inflated to 5 psi. Each vehicle has a 400 litre fuel tank.
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The trucks are mainly support vehicles for the race itself, which features seven groups of three skiers covering about 800 kilometres to reach the Pole.
Meanwhile our team at Ridge A is hard at work completing the installation of our experiment. Having resolved the email communication problem, I am now able to exchange emails with Craig and have a better feeling for what is going on. Craig is only able to type for 10 minutes at a time on his Macbook Air before having to put it away to warm up. The sleek metal exterior of the laptop computer is definitely a hindrance when the temperature is nudging -40C!
Craig working on his laptop computer in his tent, connected by a 50 metre spool of cable to PLATO-R. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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Luke rugged up against the cold at Ridge A. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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Craig is working like a demon to ensure that HEAT is fully functional. In fact, he only gets a few hours sleep in the 24 hours leading to the camp pull-out.
Craig working on the HEAT telescope. The large flat mirror reflects light into a 2nd and 3rd mirror before reaching the detector in the cryostat (to the left of Craig). The detector is cooled to -220C, yes, that is minus two hundred and twenty Celsius. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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Back at South Pole, I am working hard on the software. I need to be absolutely sure that PLATO-R is bullet-proof when the team flies out of Ridge A. If something goes wrong with the software and we loose contact with the observatory, then all our efforts would have been in vain. You might think that the software should have been finalised months ago, but there are some things that always have to be tweaked at the last minute.
PLATO-A/HEAT at Ridge A appears as two black dots on the horizon in this photograph taken by Luke Bycroft.
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Luke's sketch of what we thought the Ridge A deployment would look like. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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Reality. The yellow boxes and solar panels are behind the camera. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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With PLATO-R now largely complete overnight, today is the planned pull-out day.
However, the weather puts a spanner in the works, with a prediction of insufficient visibility for a landing at South Pole for the return flight, so the decision is made to hold until the next weather update at 10am.
I inform the guys at Ridge A of the delay via email to the PLATO-R computer. An hour later, in an Iridium call from Campbell, I detect an unmistakable eagerness to return to civilisation. In principle, weather delays could extend for many days, and leave the team living on freeze-dried food and spending most of their day in sleeping bags trying to stay warm.
Fortunately, the 10am forecast looks more favourable, and the Twin Otter crew race off to ready the airplane for take-off. With almost no load, they will be able to fly non-stop to Ridge A, with an ETA of 2:20pm.
With the knowledge that "rescue" is imminent, the team completes last-minute checks of the experiment and then swings into action to pack up the campsite for a quick and efficient departure.
The welcome Twin Otter coming to take the team home, flying over the PLATO-A Engine Module. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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When Campbell tries to roll up his sleeping mat, it simply snaps into several pieces due to the cold (about -44C). Later, when the pilots try to load the bulky misshapen sleeping mats into the plane, they are dismayed to find that chunks of them just break off in their hands as they grab them. This is one useful lesson for future trips to Ridge A: standard sleeping mats, previously found to be adequate at -30C, fail catastrophically at -44.
The completed observatory at Ridge A showing the HEAT telescope (at left) nestling under its fibreglass cover, with the Instrument Module and solar panels. The flag is that of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. The Engine Module is out of the field of view. CREDIT: Craig Kulesa.
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The PLATO-R/HEAT observatory (the smudge of structures in the centre, above the skiway) from the air. CREDIT: Campbell McLaren.
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At 7:15pm I head out to the skiway to await the arrival of the Twin Otter bringing the team home. At 7:20pm the airplane appears as a dot just above the horizon, and at 7:25pm it has landed. I rush over to welcome the adventurers back to civilisation.
The Ridge A deployment team - Craig, Campbell, Luke and Loomy - having just returned to the Pole.
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Crucial configuration information for PLATO-R was written by Luke on a piece of cardboard.
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Me on the roof of the elevated building at South Pole, having just removed the Iridium aerial that I was using for communication with PLATO-R. I can confidently conclude that I am the southernmost human at this time.
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Our Canadian Twin Otter pilots have now almost completed their Antarctic season, and will be shortly flying back to northern Canada via Chile and the US.
We all met at 9am for breakfast to discuss the state of the experiment, and for me to listen to the stories of the deployment at Ridge A. I hear first-hand about the feeling that the team had when the Twin Otter took off after dropping them at Ridge A. It was certainly a slight unnerving moment to be isolated at almost the highest point on the Antarctic plateau, and having to rely entirely on the resources of the camp. Keeping warm was the main concern, with temperatures as low as -44C you have to be very mindful of conserving body heat. And, unlike at the Pole, there wasn't a warm building that you could retreat to.
The main method everyone used to stay warm was to go on a vigorous hike up and down the skiway.
One obvious effect that we hadn't thought about was that the sun's elevation changes during the day at Ridge A, resulting in temperature differences of about 10C between local noon and local "midnight". The longitude of Ridge A is about the same as India, but our team were on New Zealand time, which is what is used at the Pole. Consequently, they were trying to work outside during the coldest part of the day. With more foresight we should have moved our sleeping schedule to the new timezone.
The extreme cold also had some interesting consequences at meal breaks. The piping-hot hearty soups that Loomy made for dinner would begin to freeze rapidly from the outside in. The centre would remain warm (for at least a few minutes), while there would be ice forming on the periphery. And the metal spoon that you were using was warm where it touched the soup, but the handle acted as such an efficient heatsink that your fingers were in danger of frostbite.
Loomy cooking up a storm in the kitchen at Ridge A. The tarpaulin stops the gentle, but exceedingly cold, wind. CREDIT: Luke Bycroft.
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Fortunately the tents were very effective, and the sleeping bags were toasty.
Everyone is very buoyed that PLATO-R is communicating via Iridium and working well. There is a general feeling of disbelief that we have actually pulled this off, and pretty much according to plan. The challenge now is to keep the observatory functioning throughout the winter, and to command the telescope to take data that will lead to a better understanding of star formation. With luck, we will be presenting data from HEAT at the International Astronomical Union Annual General Meeting in Beijing in August.
An all-sky fish-eye image from HRCAM3, taken after the team had left Ridge A.
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But before then there are two crucial time periods that we have to be concerned with: the next days to weeks where we need to ensure that nothing unexpected happens to PLATO-R that could cause us to loose control of it, and in a couple of months when the sun sets and we transition from solar power to diesel engines. If the engines stop and the batteries cool below -25C, then we won't be able to restart the engines until October. With wintertime temperatures hitting -75C, we require careful thermal management.
To make it easier for me to control PLATO-R (and PLATO-A - my Chinese colleagues had left Dome A this morning, and I was now responsible for running this observatory too) I was very keen to leave South Pole and get to somewhere with a decent internet connection.
With this in mind I had requested to leave on today's flight to McMurdo, and so I left Pole at 4pm, then McMurdo at 0:30am in the morning, and arrived at Christchurch at 9am. Within 25 hours of leaving the South Pole I was back at home in warm wet Sydney. Quite a contrast.
That just about wraps up my Antarctic adventure for 2011-12. It all worked out about as well as I could have hoped for. I am still somewhat stunned that in three days we managed to install a completely remote astronomical observatory at Ridge A, and we will now be observing stars being formed in the Galactic Plane for the rest of the year.
In a month or so you should be able to google for PLATO-R and see our new website where the latest data and photos from the observatory will be displayed.
I hope that these diaries have given you some insight into what it is like to be a scientist working in Antarctica. It is certainly a privileged position to be in, and I am very grateful for the opportunity.
I will be giving a talk on the PLATO-R/HEAT deployment during UNSW's Orientation Week. It is currently scheduled for 2pm on Thursday, February 23, in QUAD Room 1001 off the Basser Steps.
Walking towards our C-17 for the flight home. Pegasus skiway, McMurdo.
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The cavernous interior of the C-17 taking us back to Christchurch.
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