NEWSThere just was another McMurdo medevac on Friday 10 May (Christchurch Press and US Air Force coverage). The US Air Force C-17 aircraft crew again relied on night-vision goggles. This time some replacement winterovers made it to McM, along with freshies. And here's hoping that the medevaced person will quickly recover...to go smell the fall flowers in Hagley Park, head home to family, or whatever. The down side to these medevacs is that they cause the small winter crew A LOT of unplanned extra work to prepare the runway, get equipment ready, and work the flight. Upcoming later in May is the next Antarctic Treaty meeting, this one will be in Brussels, Belgium (my coverage). Here's hoping that we hear a bit more about the Russian efforts to analyze the Lake Vostok drilling results. Meanwhile we have this inconclusive 30 March report from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
IceCube winterover Blaise Kuo Tiong was just interviewed by the Filipino social media site Rappler.com--Blaise was born in the Philippines, and his family moved to the US when he was 9 years old. He's the second Filipino to winter...and I highly recommend his blog. The 2011-12 season was the year of the centennial of Amundsen's and Scott's visits to Pole...now it looks like the 2013-14 summer will be the year of the bicycle! Yes, surprisingly, after last year's failed Pole venture by Eric Larsen, 2013-14 will see THREE separate ventures attempting to reach Pole by bicycle. I'm hoping they all make it! Here's the updated details about all of the upcoming private Pole travelers...including of course the British "Coldest Winter" group that may yet show up at Pole in time for Midwinters Day. The winter has barely begun, but already there have been some amazing auroras...I wish I were there to see them in person. Lacking that...some of the winterovers have been posting photos, check out my page of links to see them. But the most dramatic thing I've seen is this YouTube video by Daniel Leussler...handheld, taken from the observation deck above DA. It's hard to photograph auroras, because the cameras typically brighten up the rest of the image excessively, but this video is probably the closest capture of what the auroras really look like. Yes, there was a sudden medevac flight to McMurdo...a USAF C-17 from Washington state flew south from Christchurch on Sunday 21 April, returning to ChCh on the next day (Christchurch Press article). As is usual with such events, no information about the sick individual or other passengers, but there are now 139 winterovers at McMurdo. The flight was arranged too quickly for freshies to be included in the southbound cargo...and a couple of replacement winterovers were left behind as well. But the patient responded positively to hospital treatment in ChCh. Here's the Air Force news coverage.
It's that time of year...time for updated winterover statistics! I think I got things right this time...finally. Also, it's the time of year for sunset and various associated events. The equinox marking the first day of autumn in the Antarctic occurred at 0002 Pole time on Thursday 21 March, just after Wednesday midnight. The sunset wasn't supposed to occur for a few more days, perhaps on Saturday the 23rd, which is when the sunset dinner was held. Despite a bit of overcast, the skies allowed for views of the sunset, blue flashes and all...and thanks to refraction, the sun was still visible a couple of days later. Also triggered by the equinox was the start of the now-five-man Coldest Journey winter crossing of the continent...they hope to show up at Pole for Midwinters Day, weather, crevasses, and D-6's permitting. A bit of bad news just reported to me by 1981 w/o Mike Gilbert. Off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral...1981 winterover radio operator Pat Cornelius disappeared...after contacting the Coast Guard on 9 January to say he was having chest pains and tingling in his left arm. When his boat was located, he was not aboard. Here's the Jacksonville TV news story and the Coast Guard news coverage. Delayed from 5 March by 3 days of mechanical problems followed by one day of weather issues...the final McMurdo flight of the season was completed on the 9th. The RNZAF 757 headed north after leaving behind 143 winterovers--a group that included 34 women. Before disappearing, it wagged its wings in salute to the group gathered at the Chalet. Almost 2 weeks earlier, around midday on the 26th, the cargo vessel Ocean Giant headed off into the sun, with cargo operations complete. On the other side of the continent about 45 miles from the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Station (72ºS-23ºE), a surprising announcement came from Ran Fiennes' "The Coldest Journey" expedition, which has hardly even started. Ran will leave the venture. He developed severe frostbite in his left hand after removing his glove briefly to fix a broken ski binding. The air temperature was -22ºF, although the real problem was probably contact with the cold snow. I and many of us have removed our gloves to do things outside at Pole in much colder winter weather. Ran has suffered from bad frostbite in that hand before, during a failed solo North Pole attempt in 2000. His sled slipped through the ice, and he reached into the frigid sea to recover it...the air temperature was -30ºF. After he returned to London and waited awhile for his left hand fingers to recover, he cut them off himself with a fretsaw (similar to a coping saw), in part to save the £6,000 surgery cost. Oof. Frostbite injuries are cumulative, and the team doctor concurred that he be evacuated...which hadn't happened yet due to bad weather in the area. The other five members of the traverse party intend to continue. The expedition press releases are here. Late in the evening of Thursday 14 February the last flight of the season departed Pole...after bringing in the last couple of winterovers. The closing date was moved up a day because of bad weather forecasts--a possible storm in McM and cold temps at Pole. And the last flights were not without some boomerang action as one flight had mechanical problems. After the dust settled and that last flyby was over, there were 44 Polies left! Here is Blaise Kuo Tiong's video of the flyby! Oh, the showings of The Thing (all three versions) happened on Friday evening. The final beginning of isolation came on Tuesday the 19th after the last two Twin Otters--one KBA and one BAS, had departed on their way north. An interesting statistic--there were 115 LC-130 flights this season, the fewest in the last 20 years. Hmmm, 20 years ago in 1993 there was no traverse; this year the traverse brought in 140,000 gallons Back at McM, the NB Palmer departed for its next science cruise on schedule...the tanker finished offloading and departed on Friday morning...it was quickly replaced at the pier by the cargo ship Ocean Giant (left, a Friday afternoon webcam view) about an hour later. Oh by the way, if you've been watching that webcam view as I have, you may have noticed that the cargo vessel sat there for several days with very little activity...not much was being offloaded. It seems that the ship hit the pier a bit hard when it arrived...and the pier moved toward the peninsula and grounded in the shallow water. So it took a bit of time to inspect and adjust things before the cargo ops could begin. Since then things got back to normal, with 80+ milvans coming off in a 12-hour shift. There were 679 containers unloaded, so you can do the math. Now (Thursday) they are backloading about 577.
And on 9 February, an airlift update...after earlier cancellations, a C-17 was making its way to Christchurch from McChord Field in Washington. Would the soggy slushy Pegasus ice runway be in condition for them to head to McMurdo on Monday the 11th? YES, according to George Blaisdell, who was quoted in this 18 February Stars and Stripes article. Here is earlier Air Force news coverage.
The South Pole summer season is almost over...perhaps only about one more week to go, and folks have been leaving. The first major group departure happened on 7 January, perhaps they'll make it to NZ on Friday. Northbound departures from McM are still being hampered by the slushy conditions at the Pegasus runway at McMurdo---this continues to prevent the larger/faster C-17's from making the trip to McMurdo...and people continue to be bumped from the LC-130 flights because of weight restrictions. But at the end of January the Polies took time out for a group photo (right) in front of DA. I've seen several versions of this from different folks, but this one is from Jeffrey Donenfeld. I think he's the guy in the red coat.
Briefly, the beacon was detected near Mt. Elizabeth in the Transantarctic Mountains...weather did not permit search activities initially. It wasn't until Saturday when an LC-130 spotted the tail of the aircraft on a steep mountain cliff. Further search missions confirmed that the flight was not survivable... eventually search-and-rescue teams visited the site and recovered the cockpit voice recorder and other equipment, but it was deemed too risky to attempt recovery of the bodies. Above left is a January 2011 photo of KBC (the aircraft which was lost) at a field camp in the Transantarctic Mountains... and at right is a photo by Jeffrey Donenfeld of the memorial ceremony held at Pole on 27 January. The detailed timeline of events with links to other information and media coverage has been updated, reorganized, and moved to this page...a sad chronicle of events to be sure. Yes, it really is sealift time...and the icebreaker will be first. The Russian icebreaker Vladimir Ignatyuk left the Cape Town area on 9 January, heading southeast. The reported ETA at McMurdo is 2 February.
Speaking of icebreakers...perhaps next year at this time the USAP icebreaker will be flying the Stars and Stripes. Yes, in December, the 34-year-old Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star was reactivated in Seattle after a four-year, $57 million overhaul (Seattle Times article). And on 11 January it completed its initial sea trials (left, the Polar Star returning to port) (USCG photo from their Facebook page). It is one of the world's most powerful icebreakers...and at present it is one of only two American polar icebreakers in service. And speaking of ships which recently sailed from Cape Town...Ran Fiennes' "Coldest Journey" team sailed on 7 January. The expedition ship S. A. Agulhas (a South African ice-strengthened training ship and former polar research vessel, built in 1977 and used for 30 years to resupply the South African research bases in the Antarctic), headed more directly south from Cape Town toward Crown Bay (70ºS-23ºE). They reached that unloading point on 20 January...and after about 2 weeks of unloading and assembly work, the ship headed north on 3 February...leaving Ran Fiennes and the rest of the team on the ice to begin their travels south. Other means of travel in the news...former NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski spent three days at Pole in mid-January...oh yes, he's now the USAP medical director with UTMB--that may a more difficult job at times than his five space shuttle missions. Scott also visited Palmer Station in December.
Antarctic drilling projects have been hot news topics this season...back in early November, Peter Rejcek discussed the three biggest ones in this Antarctic Sun article. The most newsworthy of these projects from last season is of course the Russian penetration of Lake Vostok...but there hasn't been much recent news about it...until 11 January, when the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that the first ice sample of the season had been recovered from the borehole. The sample was recovered from a depth of 3406m/11,175' (a fair distance above the lake surface at 3769m/12,365'). So is it contaminated with drilling fluid? Too little information...presumably we'll hear of more drilling progress later this austral summer, as well as future plans to probe into the lake itself. Their immediate plans are to continue drilling to 3430m/11,253'. Before this news came out, I collected (and summarized) Russia's project technical reports, which were submitted to the Antarctic Treaty meetings each year. Including the fact that they had difficulty evaluating the drilling fluid density because of (inadvertent) hydraulic fracturing. The much-publicized BAS Lake Ellsworth project is located at 79ºS-99.5ºW...175 miles northeast of the ANI/ALE base camp at Union Glacier. (The heavy cargo was flown to UG on the IL-76 aircraft and traversed to the drill site by ALE.) Unfortunately, the effort to drill 10,500' to the lake surface had to be called off after their unique drilling concept failed--they'd planned to balance the lake water pressure (and prevent the drill water from entering the lake or geysering out of the hole) by connecting the drill hole with an underice water reservoir (what we'd call a rodwell bulb full of water) but they were unable to make the two connect. Back to the drawing board.... Here's the project blog (with links to the project web sites), 27 December BBC coverage of the project termination, and an April 2012 BAS presentation by David Blake which describes/depicts the drill scheme and its development (from the 2012 Polar Technology Conference which I attended). And then there is that USAP project, WISSARD, hoping to tap into subglacial Lake Whillans sometime later this month. One of the SPoT teams started hauling their equipment to the site (600+ miles SE of McM near the south edge of the Ross Ice Shelf) on 30 December (due to show up by 12 January). Here's their project home page and blog. Unlike Vostok and Ellsworth, Lake Whillans is not an isolated lake, but rather it is part of an extensive network of lakes and channels running under the ice. It is only about 10m deep, and about 800m/half a mile below the ice surface. They're also using a hot water drill system, which some media (such as this October 2011 New Scientist article) describe as the same method used by the BAS Lake Ellsworth team. But actually the system is more like something from IceCube...and since the team is packed with IceCube veterans as well, it ought to work. Here's their page with photos, information, and a schematic diagram (P&ID) of the drill system. Not to leave Pole out of the drilling discussion...there is a new approved deep ice coring project in the planning stages--the South Pole Ice Core Project has been funded for a 1500m/4900' ice coring project, planned for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 Antarctic field seasons. The project consortium includes UCI, UW, and UNH...and they're having a planning workshop in Boulder next month, across the street from my apartment (!) And in current news, the ARA project completed drilling their 12 210m antenna holes at Pole on 31 December, and they're now doing the wiring and testing.
After the solstice of course comes the major holiday season of Christmas and New Years...traditionally a time for great dinners, athletic events, and big parties. I'll leave it to Jeffrey Donenfeld to describe a couple of the events...one of the newer traditions is the all-station holiday photo--he includes a video of its creation. As for the athletic events, the Race around the World comes off on Christmas Eve, and it has a rather dramatic course. This event was first created by Casey Jones and Martha Kane Savage in December 1979...before that there used to be a football game, we played the Pole Bowl on Christmas Day in 1976.
Thanksgiving weekend, 24-25 November...by now the early season flight delays have mostly been resolved...the major science groups (IceCube/ARA and SPT) have summer teams on site to do what needs to be done, and the summer construction projects are underway. Well, perhaps not this weekend, as Saturday is the day for the big dinner and the first day of a two-day weekend. There are about 155 folks on station, a few are living in the summer camp Hypertats, the only part of summer camp that is being used.
By Friday 8 November, all but a very few of the 2012 winterovers had headed north...some have made it back to North America already. And the summer people and some of the winterovers have continued to arrive from McMurdo, despite some aggravating flight delays, boomerangs, and cancellations. Both of the 2013 IceCube winterovers have arrived and are busy learning everything. These guys are Felipe Pedreros...who will be the first Chilean to winter, and Blaise Kuotiong...the first winterover originally from the Philippines. And in amongst such things as fire team training, job training, altitude sickness, they've also been blogging and posting photos! Check out the links! Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, the tourist season is getting started. The Union Glacier camp is up and running, and the first Pole venturer on the ice is American Aaron Linsdau, aiming to be only the fourth person and the first American to travel to Pole and back without assistance or resupply (ulp, that means not one cookie or drink of water from the Polies). He started his trek from Hercules Inlet on 2 November. And last week another American, Eric Larsen of Boulder, CO, announced that he'll make a solo bicycle trip to Pole starting in December. The list of NGA ventures, updated on 11 November, is here. Surprisingly on short notice, the second flight arrived on Tuesday 30 October...it was a cargo flight bringing no new people, but it took the first winterovers north. All Pole flights were cancelled on Wednesday for mechanical reasons...Thursday, plans changed several times, but an evening Herc flight brought in 40 more folks. The summer is truly underway! And on Monday the next passenger flight happened...scheduled to take about 25 of the winterovers north. A few of them who left earlier are already back in the US.  The folks on the Friday (26 October flight to Pole waited on the ice runway because of a mechanical delay...until 1300. Then the flight was cancelled. On Saturday the Pole flight was an alternate to WAIS...but the first flight to Pole did take off, and landed at Pole around noon on Saturday. At right...some of the new arrivals getting off of the aircraft (photo from Carlos Pobes). Winter is over! Yes, the big airplanes are coming. The first of the NYANG LC-130's left Schenectady NY for the ice on the 16th and 17th...(Air National Guard article). And the first one, Skier 81, reached McMurdo at 1800 on Tuesday 23 October. For a time it was announced that the first Pole flight would be on Thursday the 25th...a day ahead of schedule...and the weather looked good for the first 30 or so Polies to head south. But no...it was cancelled. Then it was to go on Friday the 26th...or.......whenever. Watch the Pole weather and the McMurdo weather...
The McMurdo summer population, like that at Pole, will be a bit smaller this year. Many of the departments have been cut at least 20%, and other cutbacks first mentioned at the annual planning conference held in Arlington in June are being implemented. For example, there will be no C-17 flights from ChCh to McM from the end of November to mid-January...and this of course will result in a cutback in freshies and mail, as well as transportation for people before and after the Christmas holidays. Another McM innovation is "the smell of fresh paint" which involves the first phase of dorm renovations,
Ran last showed up on Pole with his snowmobile-equipped Transglobe Expedition in December 1980...in sunlight and summer temperatures--at right is Ran (left) with station manager Tom Plyler discussing a certain article of clothing (perhaps from a sponsor) of a type commonly worn at Pole (more info and photos). The following northern summer I met him and the team when their ship, en route to the Arctic, stopped in Los Angeles for a trade show. After a fairly significant storm, with wind chill approaching -100ºC, things finally cleared up enough for the sun to peek through the haze on 22 September. The sunrise dinner was Saturday the 15th. But it is still cool...there was yet another 300 Club event in early September...about #8 for the season. Sorry, you'll have to go elsewhere for photos :) Josiah (Siah) Heiser, the heavy equipment operator during my 2008 winter, has just published a book about his life...from growing up, to his work on the ice which included much time at McMurdo as well as Pole...to the present time (he and wife are currently living in the Philippines). The book is now available on Kindle (readable on most anything) at Amazon.com, for not very much money (here's his blog with information and purchase link). I highly recommend it!
Discussing Winfly...here's a 17 August US Air Force press release about this year's Operation Deep Freeze (ODF); it featured the logo at right...I don't know if this is new, but I don't recall seeing it before. More coverage of Winfly the and summer season is this 17 August Antarctic Sun article...which also describes some of the upcoming events for the 2012-13 summer season. Some things we already knew...such as the 168-person Pole population, and attention to the Blue Ribbon Panel report which was released in July. Other items of note...the first main body flight to McM is scheduled for 1 October, and the Pole opening flight is scheduled for 26 October...with a USAF LC-130 rather than a Basler. One of the major construction projects at McM this season will be another 2-million-gallon fuel tank--it would give the station a better capability to operate for 2 years without a fuel resupply. And the status of the ice pier is still questionable due to a warmer-than-usual winter. As for other summer projects at Pole...it is time to do some jacking and leveling of the station, as well as the VMF (garage) building. Hopefully the permanent fuel line from the fuel arch through LO to the VMF arch and under the station toward the flight line will finally be finished, so that the fuel hose can be rolled up for good sometime during the summer. The Old Pole site needs a bit more remediation...using either heavy equipment or explosives. And there will be another attempt to establish communications with another new old satellite, either Skynet-4c or a similar one. The 2012 winter is the last currently scheduled for the BICEP-2 telescope, which is the only all-year science project requiring significant amounts of liquid helium (June Antarctic Sun article). The cryo building will be used for another science project, and there will no longer be cryo tech position after the 2012-13 summer. Google Street View update...it seems that the team also collected photos INSIDE the elevated station!. You can start here inside the galley and navigate through the hallway to Destination Alpha, and then descend the stairs outside the gym to the first floor! It's a bit discontinuous, but here are a lot of things to see along the way, including even a few Polies. Thursday 9 August...a medevac flight to McMurdo was underway. As is usual, there were not many details, but there is an interesting twist or two, as well as the usual media kerfuffle. The aircraft of choice is the Airbus A-319 that the AAD now uses for transport to Wilkins Aerodrome, the artificial ice runway near Casey. The aircraft and a 5-person medical team arrived in Chch on 8 August from Melbourne, via Hobart, and they departed for McM on the 9th, expecting to arrive there at 1300 McM/SP time, per this updated CNN article. Here is the 8 August (US time) an 8 August (US time) NSF press release. As a backup, a US Air Force C-17 is on standby in the US. Winfly was originally scheduled for later this month, with six C-17 flights to McM between 20 and 27 August. The media has been confusing things by showing old photos of the South Pole dome and referring to other Pole medevacs. This ABC Australia Radio article stated that McMurdo's Pegasus runway was "open all year round," which some of the equipment operators at McMurdo might take issue with. And the CNN report states that there are "60 or 70" folks wintering at McMurdo...actually there were 153, with another 14 souls at Scott Base. The update...the flight was successful, it was on deck at the Pegasus airfield at McM for about an hour on 9 August during the midday twilight, and returned to ChCh, arriving about 1700 that evening. The weather at McM was good, the temperature was -31ºF/-35ºC when the aircraft landed. On a related note, Renée-Nicole Douceur, the 2011 Pole winter site manager who suffered a stroke in August 2011, is reported to be recovering from that mishap, "...about 80 percent back by now," in her words. She's been recovering since April, living in her luxury coach "The Gypsy Queen" in Hampton Falls, NH, and she hopes to head for Wyoming. She hasn't ruled out a lawsuit, and there may also be a book. The complete story is in this 8 August Newburyport (MA) Daily News article. Another medical update on a more positive note...UTMB, the ASC medical subcontractor, recently hired Dr. Scott E. Parazynski as the director of their Center for Polar Medical Operations. Scott, as an astronaut, flew on five space shuttle missions, and is also a serious mountain climber--he's the first astronaut to summit Everest in 2009. Here's the UTMB press release.
Several links to note. First and most important, the actual page to download the full report or the executive summary is here. My summary? I defer to others; actually the executive summary is good, or a shorter excellent one was written by Peter Rejcek in this Antarctic Sun article. For more background information, this NSF page includes links to the 23 July webcast which announced the panel's results, as well as shorter video statements by panel chairman Norm Augustine and members Don Hartill, Bart Gordon, and Duncan McNabb, and acknowledgement of the report cover art (right) by NSF illustrator Zina Deretsky. Three of the panel members, Hugh Ducklow, Lou Lanzerotti, and Diana Wall, have spent lots of time doing research in Antarctica, and Hugh spent much of the 2008 winter at Palmer studying microplankton. A couple of other interesting news stories have been making the rounds this week. First, this 17 July feature from the Washington Post's weather blog, "South Pole weather: 200 degrees of separation from Washington D.C.'s scorching heat." It features commentary from several winterovers, including meteorologist Dale Hershlag, IceCuber Sven Lidstrom, South Pole Telescope observer Cynthia Chiang, and physician Dale Mole...and if that isn't enough, given the current Washington D.C summer heat, there is a link to Antarctic jobs (!) And earlier this month the discovery of the Higgs boson stirred new interest in IceCube; one of several good articles appeared in the Huffington Post...this features one of Sven's many amazing outdoor winter photos.
Got helicopters? It seems that the contract for McM helo's, currently held by PHI, (company web site), is up for renewal, effective for the 2013-14 season. PHI got the original contract in 1996, taking over from the Navy flight squadron (VXE-6). Here's an Examiner news article, as well as the fedbizopps.gov announcement page which has additional links and info.
A celebration of life for Kathie Hill was held in the Denver area on 4 August (details). Time to highlight some excellent artistic work. First, Anthony Powell, from Hawera, NZ, has spent 9 winters on the ice (and a few more summers), some with his wife, working at Scott Base, McMurdo, and under NSF Artists and Writers grants. His work has appeared in various places around the world, most recently in the BBC "Frozen Planet" series. Now he's in the final stage of putting together his feature film, "Antarctica: A Year on the Ice," a ten-year project. He's been soliciting funds on Kickstarter, offering copies of the completed DVD and other goodies...it now has been successfully funded, and the Kickstarter preorder period has now closed. But there may be other options to preorder, stay tuned. A glimpse of Anthony (Antz) is at left along with the first trailer; his website is here, it also includes the time-lapse video of the 2012 McMurdo ship offload. His frozensouth.com blog includes both the first and second trailers. Another worthwhile project, although a bit smaller, is already funded, This is "Mikey Going Down the Book" put together my Mikey Kampmann from Portland, OR (and Portlandia) while working at Pole last summer. The kickstarter preorder period has now closed, but stay tuned to mikey going down for other options. The NSF/USAP annual planning conference, 26-28 June in Virginia, is over. And a bit more news about the upcoming seasons is coming out. The lingering contingencies that were discussed include the possibility of no icebreaker in the upcoming summer, the thin condition of the sea ice around McMurdo (which could affect the science projects traditionally based on the annual ice, not to mention the annual ice runway), and planning for the ice pier (well, if there IS an icebreaker). Closer to Pole...the peak summer population this season may be only 168...or to put it into my perspective, only 200% of the planned peak population for my first season in 1976-77. Instead of opening summer camp (which still has that frozen sewer outfall, remember?) a couple of Hypertats would be moved over close to the station to house the peak population; the occupants would use the bathroom facilities inside the station. I wonder if they'll try and move the freshly upgraded solar-powered Hypertats...perhaps if it can be done this way as was done with the Jamesways in 1997-98.
A week earlier, 2011-12 summer carpenter Jesse Peterson died in a Colorado canoeing accident (story below). The middle of June...things were quiet on the ice. Well, after all, it is the month of midwinter (and the McMurdo folks celebrated on the weekend of 16-17 June). And it has also been cold. At Pole the temperatures dipped back into 3 digits (scroll image and weekly climate summary), with, of course, some of the traditional events associated with that phenomenon. So...much of the major ice news is happening north of 60ºS. First, it must be said that folks are being hired for next season...PQ's are underway...and planning for the summer is happening. On the jobs front, next year's Pole winter site manager has been hired and starts work on 2 July, but there are still lots of openings out there. Is it too late to apply? Well, maybe not, but it is not getting any earlier. Remember, the ASC job postings are on this page, along with links to a few of the other subcontractor positions. ASC announced that they planned to get job offers for next winter for current winterovers made and confirmed by September...but there are lots of other jobs to fill. Otherwise, what happens in the rest of the world during the middle of the austral winter is...meetings. The biggest one is of course the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting which was held in Hobart between 11-20 June. So far there have not been any earth-shaking announcements, but some of the news of interest includes formal approval of a new Korean station next to the Italians in Terra Nova Bay. This will be a futuristic US$ 91 million 50,000 square foot facility depicted and described in this news article, it will be completed and occupied in March 2014. The Koreans as well as the Chinese were being courted to set up major science/support bases in Hobart. And on the science front, an Australian geographic study identified 15 distinct Antarctic regions--a far cry from the generic East and West Antarctica we are familiar with (AAD press release). Concurrently with the Treaty meetings, an Australian Green Party spokesperson hosted a forum on 17 June to discuss a proposal to seek World Heritage status for Antarctica...but some consider this to be an opening to reopen the minerals debate (The Conversation blog post). Other meetings in America...the Blue Ribbon Panel, which visited Antarctica this past season, has held several formal meetings which are documented on the NSF web site. Minutes for the first 3 of the meetings have been published; the first meeting covers the initial charter of the panel, the second is a followup after their visit to Pole and McMurdo, and the third is a later followup after they visited Palmer. The fourth meeting (for which minutes have not been published) addressed the final details of report preparation. Some interesting thoughts...some may get implemented, some we may consider a bit surprising, and some are probably out of the question considering the current state of the economy and the NSF budget. But...remember, the 1997 report by the previous panel resulted in many significant changes...including the final impetus for the current elevated station. The final report is expected to be released before Winfly. Here's the NSF link to the Blue Ribbon Panel documentation; these pages also include other older reports including the seminal 1997 document. And then there was the NSF USAP Annual Planning Conference, which was held on 26-28 June at a Lockheed Martin facility in Crystal City, Arlington, VA. The conference web site includes the agenda and a list of point papers and discussion items...interestingly, some of these are items of interest which were mentioned in the Blue Ribbon Panel meetings...such as icebreaker support, McMurdo and field camp housing, and a runway at Pole for heavy wheeled aircraft (something that people have been talking about since the early 1960s). The first weekend in June saw the voting for the next version of the South Pole marker, which will be created by machinist Derek Aboltins and unveiled next New Years. There were SEVENTEEN entries in the competition this year! Remember the dome? The top ring with the five holes was installed at the new Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme last year, but it was incomplete. The American flag was put in place atop the dome ring by Steve Bruce, Lee Mattis, and Jerry Marty, on 29 March 2012 California time (Antarctic Sun article). Lockheed Martin appears to be progressing with their assumption of the USAP contract. Folks are being hired by them and the subcontractors, the PQ process has been set up by the UTMB (University of Texas Medical Branch) in Galveston, the same organization that studied my swollen knee during my 2008 winter. And plans are being made for next summer (well, assuming there is an icebreaker, see below). At present it looks like the station opening will be one or more LC-130 flights on 27 October, rather than Baslers. The auroras have been amazing this year, or at least so it seems compared to my 3 winters (well, I thought they were amazing then). In addition to miscellaneous photos posted by the winterovers on the links page (and I've added a couple more links), check out this Japanese site for the very latest photos and videos from equipment maintained by science tech friend Ethan Good. On 9 May, NSF announced that the Murmansk Shipping Company, which had contracted to provide the icebreaker Vladimir Ignatyuk for the 2011-12 and future seasons, had advised that the icebreaker would not be available in the future. Here's the "Dear Colleague" letter from Scott Borg, NSF Antarctic division director...and here is a fresh 9 May solicitation by NSF on the FedBizOpps site. They did this last year about this time after the Swedish government withdrew the availability of the Oden. The US Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star is still in refit and will not be available until 2013. Of historical interest...the solicitation (as did the one in 2011) includes a detailed spreadsheet of US Antarctic icebreaker operations since the IGY. The denial of the CH2M Hill protest of the contract award to Lockheed Martin was announced tersely by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on 18 March. Finally on 9 May we have the detailed report, or at least a redacted version. Here's the Washington Technology article with a link to the pdf of the decision (which has now also been included in the GAO decision page.
3-5 April...I attended the annual Polar Technology Conference in Fairlee, VT...close to sponsor CRREL (the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory) in Hanover NH, not to mention Dartmouth. This is a somewhat ad-hoc production...the conference is a volunteer effort, this one drew about 70 people including new and old friends. NSF was represented by Vladimir Papitashvili, the astrophysics/geospace program director. It was a great experience. The formal discussions included power and communications for small remote data collection stations in the Arctic and Antarctic that need to be powered with wind and solar and high-tech batteries, and equipped with hardware that will send data out via Iridium and other satellite systems. There was also discussion about bigger stuff...the traverses to Summit in Greenland as well as from McMurdo to Pole...the new BAS station at Halley that is currently in its first winter season...and the future plans for Summit and/or nearby stations in the middle of Greenland. Some older items of interest (other old news is in the archive): WIRED magazine has a feature article on Jerry Marty, Carlton Walker, and the station construction in the July 2002 issue. Read about the settlement problems...why the place wasn't considered fit for occupancy for the 2002 winter.
Another new science project...in 2002 a 10-meter submillimeter telescope (up from 8 meters!) that will search for new galaxy clusters and study dark energy. Plans were to attach it to the DSL (dark sector lab) University of Chicago press release. It was originally scheduled to have a ground shield that is larger than the Dome (built by Temcor, the same company that built the dome...). The telescope was completed in 2006-07, and the huge ground shield was eventually cancelled. On 8/13/02 NSF had a meeting with potential contractors and suppliers for a possible fiber optic cable to Dome C. Yes, you read that right (news article). Since Pole is way below the horizon for the commercial geosynchronous satellites, one option is to run a cable about 1050 miles to the newly constructed French/Italian Concordia Station at Dome C. (This station is scheduled for full-time occupancy next winter.) The project calls for several years of studies and trials, with the actual stuff involving traverses to get the cable to Pole and Dome C as well as along the route. Back in mid March 2002 two other iceberg events happened. First, there was another piece of the Thwaites Ice Tongue (75°S-108°W) about 2100 square miles (NOAA press release) which got designated B22. And then there was the collapse of another hunk of the Larsen ice shelf east of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Larsen Ice Shelf B disintegrated within the past couple of months, as evidenced by photos and animations from the NSIDC in Boulder, which also has links to other coverage. The BBC has an excellent article about both events. Check out the amazing panorama of the inside of the dome by Marc Hellwig--seen here on Dana Hrubes' April 2001 page--warning it may make you dizzy! The venerable New South Polar Times mailing list moved to a home on Yahoo, thanks to 2001 w/o science tech Andrea Grant. Join the discussion... The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) had a major feature on the Pole construction in their December 2000 magazine, including articles by Frank Brier and Jerry Marty. That section is no longer online, although I did archive the original article by Dennis Berry and Forrest Braun (BBFM Engineers, Anchorage) which features the details of foundation design and the jacking systems. Here is the link to my 1999 Doc Jerri medevac coverage. The spectacular April 2001 medevac flight to Pole is covered here. And my archive of other news, links to press releases, and older media coverage is here. Other Antarctic news sites...Explorers Web (thepoles.com), freshly enhanced, is operated by Thomas and Tina Sjogren, the "Wearable" expedition folks that trekked to Pole in 2001-02. They are up to date on all the Pole NGA ventures as well as Vinson, Everest, the North Pole, and other similar attractions, and they have an excellent guide for planning your own stroll to Pole. Brendon Grunewald's old 70 South news site has evolved into the Polar Conservation Organisation, but it still features lots of Antarctic and related news from everywhere, updated daily by anyone, yes, you too. The news and information pages of the Antarctic Connection are updated occasionally with current news and other information from and about Antarctica. The Antarctic Sun is extremely prolific of late. The current editor is Peter Rejcek, a 2004 Polie winterover. Sun archives run back to 1996-97, the final year when the McMurdo newspaper was a Navy publication, the Antarctic Sun Times. Before then in the old days it went by other names....here is the story. NZ Antarctic Philately pages by Steven McLachlan . The news page features many current events, including many pictures from the various private expeditions at Pole this past summer. He also has information on the 99-00 cruises of the Polar Duke south of NZ in support of German and Italian science projects, 98-99 construction of the new base at Dome C... The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) published biweekly newsletters on NGA (private) expeditions, cruises and tourist events. Unfortunately this was discontinued in May 2003, and the archives are no longer available. But they do feature a separate news page for the official Australian program. The NSF Office of Polar Programs (OPP) page contains links and a search engine. Most recent press releases are also here, scroll to the bottom. The rest of the story... can now be read online or offline in the newsletter of the Antarctican Society. Highly recommended. Here is the latest contact info as well as the historical background about the group. [top] | [home]WEATHER
(Tricks: some wind speeds are given in meters per second. One m/s is about 3.6 km/hr, 2-1/4 mph, or 2 knots. Also, they may use a Julian date, this is the sequential number from starting from 1 through 365 or so. For example, 07031 is January 31, 2007.) Now about those satellites...
As for the satellites themselves, since they were old the orbits wobbled so the station could see them a few hours a day. MARISAT-F2 (Maritime Communications Satellite), GOES-3 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, as it was a NOAA weather satellite), and TDRS-1 combined [the links for individual satellites here are to Wikipedia articles] gave a window of almost 12 contiguous hours per day with an original theoretical 5 MBPS transfer speed, which has been upgrades several times over the years to more than 60 MBPS. Most of the increased bandwidth goes to data transfer. The oldest of these three, MARISAT-F2 was decommissioned in October 2008 after deterioration in its telecommand link (Antarctic Sun article). This cut the total window by two hours and the bandwidth by a bigger percentage. A year later in October 2009, the TDRS-1 satellite (or TDRSS-1, depending on the NASA contractor and acronym you So at present, Pole uses GOES, which provides a 1.5 Mbps inbound and 1024 Kbps outbound data rate for about 6 hours a day; and a constellation of NASA TDRSS satellites: TDRS 3, TDRS 4, TDRS 5, and TDRS 6 via a second antenna terminal, the SPTR-2 (South Pole TDRS Relay) link completed during the 2008-09 summer (right, a construction photo from Dave Smith; here are more), and here is an April 2009 USAP page with a link to an Antarctic Sun article--lots more info. These satellites are available for much shorter periods on an ever-changing schedule, and at a greater expense to NSF. They provide a 5 Mbps IP data link, and a separate 150 Mbps one-way (northbound) link for bulk science data. Not all of the "above-the-horizon" time (what typically appeared on the old scroll satellite availability page) is actually available to USAP--the program aims for about 4 hours per day, and this has created a complex daily scheduling job which keeps a friend of mine busy in Denver. During the 2009-10 summer some field tests were conducted using the Intelsat/Paradigm/Astrium-operated Skynet-4C British military satellite, which was slowly increasing in visibility at Pole. Here is the October 2009 contract award announcement, a 2010 announcement from Intelsat, and a more detailed 2010 Intelsat report on the initial testing (interestingly, these satellites use the Oakhanger ground station southeast of London in the UK--while working for Ford Aerospace I visited that station in 1980 as part of a US Air Force satellite contract I was then involved with...and Philco-Ford, a predecessor to Ford Aerospace, actually manufactured the first Skynet satellites in the 1960s). The Pole equipment was designed, some equipment was bought (January 2011 SPAWAR request for information), a dish and receiving system was installed in the large radome with the GOES dish during the 2011-12 austral summer (Skynet and GOES are in opposite directions), and USAP bought time on the satellite. But when the installation was completed, the satellite could not be located. Turns out that the Skynet orbit had been adjusted so that it was behind MAPO, so the earth station would need to be relocated. Instead, arrangements were used to use a different satellite from the same family, NATO-IVB, and tests were conducted successfully during the 2012 winter. This satellite is currently providing a T1 (1.5 Mbps link) for at least 4 hours a day...and it was operating on a preliminary basis since late October. (Since it is till provisional, it doesn't yet appear on the various satellite uptime schedules (such as this one), but in late November it was available in the early morning hours, roughly 0100 to 0500.) NATO-IVB was launched from Cape Canaveral in 1993, here's a generic photo from Astrium. The SKYNET-4C is still available for use as well, but this would require a new antenna installation at Pole. In addition to the larger geosynchronous satellites there is, of course, Iridium, which is always available for official/emergency phone calls. Additionally there is a data link consisting of 12 Iridium phones, each capable of a 2400 bps data link, which are multiplexed to produce a 28 kbps data link. This is used for 24/7 email (for small emails <50k or so). Other resources linked here: -the recently upgraded and enhanced USAP satellite information pages with links to the weekly satellite schedule PDF file (still sans SKYNET) and even more geeky information. -the old link to satellite times and network information from the folks at Richmond (South Miami, formerly Malabar) which now only includes GOES. -a brief NSF 2006 Powerpoint presentation by Erick Chiang and Pat Smith, titled "Data Communications Supporting Astronomy/Astrophysics at South Pole Station" which addresses the conditions and future plans at that point in time. -a May 1995 report by Bob Loewenstein, Bill Smythe, and Brent Jones, Science Requirements for South Pole Station Computing and Communications. Some interesting facts, figures, and historical background. 1 GB/day of data transmission--hmmm, where would that leave IceCube? [top] | [home]SPORTS (?!)The 2013 Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting (ATCM XXXVI) will be held 20-29 May in Brussels, Belgium. Here's the preliminary information page with a link to the boilerplate agenda, and here is the host country information website. There hasn't been much news coverage of the upcoming event so far, but I'm hoping that we'll hear more about it. And I'm also hoping that the Russian delegation once again provides an update on their Lake Vostok activities, as they have in previous years. The 2012 meeting happened on 11-20 June, in Hobart, Australia. The 2011 event was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, it started with a dinner on the evening of 19 June and ran until 1 July. The 2010 event, known as ATCM XXXIII, occurred between 3 and 14 May 2010 in Punta del Este, Uruguay. If you dig into the official Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) site you can find the meeting reports and documents from the meetings...and the searches have been simplified a bit. You now can search or browse for them here...or look at the Antarctic Treaty Information Exchange for any nation. The US reports include information on the various stations, cruises and science projects--more current data than that on the NSF website...but no lists of personnel. The NGO information is also included. I try and highlight a few of the significant meeting documents elsewhere on this site. Nowadays there are several commercial marathon ventures in the Antarctic...most commonly sought out by people who want to complete a marathon on all seven continents:
Of course, the 2011-12 season was the biggest ever for Pole, as it had been the centennial year of Amundsen's and Scott's arrival at what has been called an "awful place." But folks continue to show up. There are two principal tourist operators--flights from Punta Arenas to Patriot Hills (nowadays Union Glacier instead) and beyond are operated by Antarctic Network International (ANI)/Antarctic Logistics and Exploration (ALE). ANI continues to be actively booking tourists. The other operation is based out of the airstrip at Novo (Novolazarevskaya), a Russian base which is served by flights from Cape Town. It is operated by Antarctic Logistics Centre International (ALCI) and The Antarctic Company (TAC). These organizations do not appear to be seriously booking private tourist flights at present, but another British based company White Desert, has established a tourist destination "Whichaway Camp" near Novo (no, nowhere near the Whichaway Nunataks) with penguin colonies and mountains nearby. TAC also operates its "Oasis" guesthouse about 10 miles from Novo at Schirmacher Oasis. Novo is a 3000m blue ice runway originally built by ANI near the Russian Novolazarevskaya base, in the past it was known as Blue One, and on some maps you may see it designated as "White Desert." Perhaps the most serious travel agent booking Pole trips is the Chicago-based company Polar Explorers...they are booking trips to Pole via PA/Union Glacier for US$45,000 ex PA. Here's the current listing of 2013-14 and other future NGO treks/ventures...(expedition links from previous seasons are on the news archive page; see these links).
Here are my records of the 2012-13, 2011-12, 2010-11, 2009-10, 2008-09, 2007-08, 2006-07, 2005-06, 2004-05, 2003-04, 2002-03, 2001-02, 2000-01 and 1999-2000 NGA expeditions. Keep in mind that the older expedition web sites tend to disappear. The 2000-01 Russian "Millennium Expedition" (skydiving/ballooning) is covered on a separate page. |
