[photo by Jon Berry, click for more!]
More dome details...on 10 March NSF released this extensive press release with photo gallery!
The McMurdo summer season officially ended Friday 5 March, as the last flight, the Australian A319 Airbus, departed. Flight statistics for this season--in addition to several Airbus missions, there were 59 C-17 flights, 7 RNZAF C-130 flights, and two trial flights by the RNZAF 757 aircraft. Here's the Antarctica New Zealand press release with photos. It turns out that the U. S. Air Force flight season to the ice had been completed the previous week, on 24 February (USAF press release).
Some late summer satellite news, there was an enginering test in January investigating the possible use of the Intelsat SkyNet-4c commercial satellite as a replaccement for the TDRS-F1 satellite which was decommissioned last October. Who at Pole assisted with these tests...well, Shaun Meehan, the 2008 and 2010 winter comms tech of course. The Skynet satellite is slowly drifting into an orbit with increasing Pole coverage. It could be in service in 2011, here is the contract award announcement, and here is an unofficial IceCube blog presentation about the current and future satellite situation. Use of the current TDRSS satellites costs the program over $100 per minute. Speaking of satellites, NSF has recently updated their Pole satellite stuff including lots of information about the current systems as well as a new availability page which can be found here (PDF file). More of my satellite information is below.
Global warming? Or is it more appropriate to say global warning? One unarguable fact is that the debate itself is certainly continuing to heat up. Other facts...while the Antarctic Peninsula and coastal areas are warming, as evidenced by the continuing and recent iceberg activity (AAD press release, photos and data and Antarctic Sun article), the South Pole temperatures have actually been getting colder since measurements began in 1957. Winterover meteorologist Tim Markle explains this in this recent video interview posted by Earthgauge. Tim also notes that 2009 by itself was the warmest year on record. More commentary is here in this 1 March blog posting by Britsh meteorologist Andy Russell. What does this mean for this winter's potential 300 club members? Too early to tell.
Yes, winter 2010 started on 14 February. This date marked the end of a dramatic summer construction seasson--officially the last for the South Pole Station Modernization (SPSM project). The most obvious change of course was the removal of the dome (left, the 15 January final group photo by Forest Banks, taken just before the last few pieces were removed). But elsewhere things are looking a lot more finished thanks to the completion of the "pretty stuff" as C-note used to describe the siding panels. At right is a recent aerial view of the elevated station (thanks to Ethan Good) showing the finished roof, complete with its yellow grating in the science area above B2. Other buildings around the station also received the finished siding, including cryo, RF, and the SPT wing of DSL.
Elsewhere, a bit less dramatic perhaps, the Cheese Palace was made to disappear, and the long-abandoned Hypertats were dug up and relocated, two by summer camp and two at the end of the world. The remediation of the Old Pole site, begun last March, was continued--one possible use for this area that had been considered is a relocated and expanded NGA aircraft parking/camping area. Efforts this summer included a GPR survey followed by some grooming and dragging, but...as happened last March, soft spots opened up, this time sinking a Challenger and the D-8. The equipment was recovered safely, and plans are being reviewed for additional remediation work next summer.
More on the dome deconstruction...after a the last big food pull the week before Thanksgiving and some other clearing and preliminary stuff, the structural work began. Skylab went first (photos), and the first top section of the dome was lifted off on 18 December. The rest of my dome photos are here. Other coverage elsewhere--on 10 November the New York Times published this excellent article on 10 November for which I was interviewed. And there is significant Antarctic Sun coverage, this feature
in ExplorersWeb, and the OAEA publication Explorer's Gazette (index page). And as for more photos I must also recommend this fresh collection by Forest Banks, available here. Forest provided me other pictures including the progress photo at left.
Science stuff...IceCube had yet another successful summer, it is hard for me to believe this was the penultimate drilling season, especially since when I showed up for my 2005 winter they had successfully completed exactly one hole. This season they started drilling on 4 December, and completed 20 holes on 20 January, 10 days ahead of schedule, for a total of 79. Current plans are for a total of 86 holes, which means only 7 to be drilled next summer. All of the holes through the firn have been completed. Here is the end of season press release...the weekly reports from this past summer are available in the archive section here. Hmmm...what will B1 lounge be like next summer? Faciliies related stuff...the IceCube lab (ICL) got a real stairway to the roof this past summer, and the computer room fire suppression system was mostly installed. Moving to DSL, the South Pole Telescope (SPT) is producing an incredible amount of data about the beginning of the universe...which of course means there have been an incredible number of papers published just in the past year. For more SPT info the best source I can think of at the moment is fellow 2005/2008 winterover Dana Hrubes. At the other end of DSL the new incarnation of BICEP, otherwise known as BICEP2, has cranked up to study other angles of the beginning of the universe. The SPASE-2 hut has been retired from the dark sector, and the cosray detectors have been relocated between the station and ARO. Back behind where the dome used to be, the antenna crew took down some of the old towers, although if you look closely at some of the dome demo pictures, there are still a couple left out there.
McMurdo update...some fairly major landscape changes happened or are in progress. Probably the most sentimentally significant was the demo of Building 63, the 1950s vintage Quonset hut otherwise known as the bowling alley...which met its demise due to structural failure (yes, the manual pinsetting equipment was saved). Along with that, the T-site building was removed, along with one of the two remaining nuke plant buildings halfway up Ob Hill. And building 155 was given a distinctive coat of blue paint! I do have pictures.
The Antarctic contract...let me say first that major updates are posted on my definitive commentary page about the rebid. On 23 December the Federal Business Opportunities site posted another update, but it is already stale, since it describes a request for the bidders to reformat some of their financial information back in October. There also are some additional Q&A's indicating that there will be some "best and final" negotiations at some point. Since then, on 5 January NSF FINALLY posted a revised schedule on their contract rebid website, although there is not a lot of new detail here either. The Denver Westword news blog put out this story on 30 December with additional information on the lack of information; writer Jonathan Shikes quotes RPSC spokesperson Valerie Carroll..."they received a lot of info from all kinds of competitors and bidders, and it wasn't as easy to compare apples to apples." She explains that RPSC is negotiating for a year extension, and that the award is expected around September 2010.
New Years Day always brings the unveiling of the new Pole marker (right) at a new location, and this year was no exception. Here's my page of photos and info about the marker and the event.
The last weekend in November marked the sad 30th anniversary of the tragic DC-10 crash on Mt. Erebus. The NZ program sent family representatives to the ice for memorial services, a couple of NZ articles are here and here.
12 November was the 40th anniversary of the first time women showed up at Pole...six of them all at once. The stories from 2009 and 1969 are here, the date was marked by many of the women on station posing in the photo at left.
1977 Pole Soul sad news...and not new. We just learned that Dave Pluth, one of our 1976-77 GFA's, died last May in Rwanda while on assignment with the national tourism agency (more information).
The history of early season flight delays repeated itself at the end of the 2009 winter. After too many Basler delays, the Hercs showed up, and the first one headed for Pole on Wednesday 28 October...and landed. Visibility was back down to 1 mile (NYANG press release on their deployment). They kept flying to ramp things up and put the station in summer mode quickly. By mid November all of the 2009 winterovers were gone.
The second and third Baslers were scheduled for Friday the 23rd, but the weather observations continued to be bad. Finally one took off...and landed at Pole late Friday afternoon. History repeated itself again, and the stage was set as it were for the First Flight Festival on Saturday evening...a major musical event in the gym.
The first Basler arrived on Monday the 19th, bringing 16 new people and taking 3 winterovers north. The Basler along with a Twin Otter had arrived from Rothera on Tuesday 13 October for a refueling stop on the way to McMurdo. The Basler continued on...the Twin Otter crew ended up staying overnight due to mechanical difficulties--it did not continue to McM until Thursday. Since the Twin Otter was the backup rescue aircraft, the Basler couldn't head south on NSF charter until the Twin Otter was in place. So the opening flight originally headed south on Friday the 16th but boomeranged presumably due to lousy weather and visibility at Pole.
Last year the Canadians on the transit flight brought a few gifts and freshies from Chile (Pisco and oranges!) but this year they did not.
The TDRS-1 satellite was taken out of service on 21 October. From here on, in addition to GOES, the comms will use TDRS 3, 4, 5, and 6 via the SPTR-2 link completed last summer (my complete coverage of the satellite systems and issues past and present is below). TDRS-1 was launched (with difficulty) on the maiden flight of space shuttle Challenger on STS-6 in April 1983.
Bill Spindler was among a number of Polies interviewed in early October for this extensive article "Life in Antarctica is cold — but bloggers there can still get burned" in the Denver alternative weekly newspaper Westword.
For some reason or other, a number of past, present and future Polies gathered in Denver at the end of September...including the indubitable Jake Speed along with wife Kathy! At right, some of the documentation... along with an update on Jake, Kathy, and the Jake Speed Fund!
The sun came up! And even visible, thanks to a YouTube video from friend Weeks Heist. The sunrise dinner was 18 September, followed by an open mike night. Meanwhile, a New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) C-130 has made a medevac flight to McMurdo.
An environmental agreement by Antarctic Treaty nations and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) threatens to disrupt the NSF resupply shipping to McMurdo. The IMO tentatively adopted a measure banning the use of heavy bunker fuel oil by vessels in the Southern Ocean. The measure is a result of recent cruise ship disasters, and it is aimed primarily at that segment of the shipping industry, but it seems that the older US Military Sealift Command vessels used to resupply McMurdo also require heavy bunker fuel. Here's a Science Magazine blog posting.
A fresh look at the LO arch (left)...it is now brightly lit and filling up with shelving, thanks to lots of cold weather work by carpenters Todd Adams and Bill Stiner, electricians Robert Dragonfly and Monty Myrtle, project engineer Nathan Greenland, and others to help pull wire and put the erector sets together. Last winter we could not comprehend wire pulling during the winter, but they'd developed a workable system (which requires 7-8 people) to make it happen in cold temps. Soon the contents of the dome will be moved out, some of it to the new shelving units. Many more details are found in a 28 August Antarctic Sun article by correspondent/sous chef Michèle Gentille which includes that LO arch photo by Nathan Greenland.
After two days of cancellations, the first winfly flight into McMurdo finally happened on Saturday 22 August, bringing 120 smiling tanned new faces to the ice. Ten folks departed, but by one friend's estimate this represented a 12% increase in the Antarctic population. This was the first of five scheduled flights, including another of those "night vision" landings that they started last year (Antarctic Sun article).
Late winter fun...the Antarctic Film Festival has happened. Stations all over the continent created short films which had to include required content such as a roll of toilet paper, the sound of a can being opened, and the dialog phrase "Want to buy a dog?" A Rothera winterover shamelessly credits his station's winning video on this blog page, but he also credits one of the amazing Pole creations, a spoof on the making of a trailer for the forthcoming movie "Whiteout," which may actually get released in September. First you need to watch the real studio trailer of the movie here, then have a look at David Barud's vimeo site for the director's cut of the trailer spoof that he and Francis Shiel created, featuring many of the 2009 wo's. And there is also the film "A new FNG." Yeah, I know, this is a historical web site, but these cinema efforts are awesome :) More film links are available on this blog page from Anthony Powell at McMurdo.
The Jake Speed fundraising effort has been getting great support on the ice and elsewhere, but help is still needed. To date the polar community has raised over $29,000! An impressive sum...thanks to all who have contributed! Several weeks ago Jake was discharged from the hospital and is getting outpatient care and therapy near his California home...learning how to use his new bionic features. He still has a long way ahead of him. Please have a look at the fundraising page which includes lots of photos of the Jake we know. I added another page of pictures on 14 June. And Steffen Richter, while traveling through Iran in June, shared things as well with this excellent version. Oh...Steff's travel story is quite something else that is well worth following!
Yes, the 1999 Pole doctor Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald, who was medevaced from Pole at the end of that winter due to her serious breast cancer...succumbed to the disease on 23 June. Here's the CNN story that broke the coverage, an obituary from the Boston Globe, a press statement from NSF director Arden Bement,, and coverage from the Antarctic Sun. Apparently the memorial service was still pending as of 6 July. Her photo at left was released by NSF in 1999. Here is my original 1999 coverage of her story, which I've updated with the missing press releases.
From 3-5 June I was at the Antarctic Deep Freeze Association reunion in Madison...a great time to get together with Antarcticans and Polies from 1956 to, well, today, yes we had a phone call with Pole, one of the featured events.
Hometown boy makes the papers...well, in this case it is Boulder native and winter site manager Logan Grover, who happened to get covered by the Boulder Daily Camera on 6 June. The reporter actually asked me for info. Anyway, here's the writeup.
News from McMurdo...for the second winter in a row, a significant outbuilding was lost to fire. This time it was the Kiwi A-Frame...a structure I remember from my happy camper course back in 1976. Here's a news story from the NZ Herald with a spectacular photo.
Sadly, Dr. Matt Houseal, who wintered at Pole in 1991 fresh out of residency, was murdered in Baghdad on 11 May...leaving behind a beloved wife and 7 children. we Polies and Palmerites were represented at the funeral...Al Oxton provided commentary and photos, and Dave Gallas sent flowers remembering Matt's time at Palmer Station. Here's the coverage and photos... updated 25 May.
The demise of AMANDA was mistakenly reported here prematurely, but now we have the word...it was turned off at 1511 Monday 11 May, but not before she complained a bit during her final activity. At right, IceCube winterover Erik Verhagen offers a tribute. Now we'll see if we can keep MAPO and the machine shop warm and toasty for the rest of the winter. Up in the heavens, the auroras have been spectacular. I'm a few thousand miles away, but I strongly recommend you check out the amazing sky shots the winterovers are coming up with!
From Summit Camp on top of the Greenland icecap...where some Polie folks and friends go to work during the off season, comes an incredible story of how a 38-year-old equipment operator I know survived being lost outside in a storm and whiteout for 58 hours. Well...by now you may have figured it out...yes, it was the indubitable Jake Speed. Temperatures were reported as low as -44°F, with 45 knot winds. When things subsided a bit and a search party showed up in a Tucker Sno-Cat looking for signs of his body, to the great surprise of the searchers, Jake actually walked up to the vehicle and climbed in, asking if they were going back to the station anytime soon. A bit later his arrival at the Big House triggered a similar reaction. Here's the NSF press release...his discovery and rescue happened on 18 April. While his body temperature and smile (left) were normal, he was suffering from seriously 
frostbitten hands and feet...he was initially medevaced to a hospital in Nuun, the capital of Greenland, and more recently went on to a hospital in California, with his wife. By now he's had lots of surgery, and he did lose his right hand plus both feet, but he is, after all, Jake. Here's hoping that all ends well for this guy!
Also in Madison on 16-17 April--the fifth annual Polar Technology Conference, hosted by IceCube. The meeting purpose was to discuss requirements and planning for polar research. It turned out to be a group of about 40, including yours truly. Bill Spindler was there to discuss such things as the research planning that went into the development of the three permanent stations at Pole, and other such stuff...as well as meeting some other Antarcticans that I haven't seen in awhile. Much of the focus was on power and communications--we're talking something like a few watts of power and a few seconds of connectivity to Iridium, to enable remote data collection sites to operate and stay in touch...along with appropriate computer equipment and software. Since these use alternative energy, my talk included the slightly larger (3KW) wind turbine project at Pole (right) back in 1997. Here is the conference web site. It includes a link to the lists of the participants for this year and the previous years, and the presentations will be posted as well.
Remembering the old days...something not to be missed is the collection I call The 1974 Negatives...a unique glimpse of life at Pole 35 years ago this winter. 
The photo at left shows the last version of the main entrance to the original station...still decorated with some commemorative photographs and other items that can be found in the elevated station today (the black item between the two photos of Amundsen and Scott is that marble plaque that was presented to the station on the 50th anniversary of the arrival of these two gentlemen). Anyway, this gallery contains almost 100 pictures from the last winter of the original station now known as Old Pole. Somewhat approprate to mention here perhaps, since the entrance you see here that used to be on the surface has gradually gotten buried. At some point in the 1990's an extension was put on the top of this vestibule--one of those corrugated steel pipe sections with a ladder inside (which had originally been furnished to extend the Dome emergency escape hatch). The top of this ladder used to be on the surface about 10 years ago...but it has gotten pretty deeply buried...so during the week before sunset NSF decided it was time to dig up the entrance and remove that access ladder...it was yanked out with the D7 (right, common drive photo).
Five years later was 1979, the fifth winter in what we called the new station otherwise known as the dome. This year was fairly well documented by one of the NOAA winterovers, John Bortniak. John supplied a number of photographs to the NOAA photo library, a few of which I have used elswhere on this web site, and he also helped me with other information about his winter. In March John presented an IPY/NOAA lecture/webcast as part of IPY entitled "Recollections on Wintering Over at the South Pole 1979" reflecting on the event of 30 years ago. Here is the link to the presentation, which includes a PDF file as well as audio/video podcasts. And here is a photo that John used in his talk--he is at the bottom of the Holy Stairs...some 30+ feet below the floor level of the vestibule in the left hand photo...down at the original snow surface level where the IGY station was constructed.
The bids for the next Antarctic support contract were due on 23 February 2009...so the real backroom bidding, arm twisting, negotiating, and "best and final" offering began...and is still underway in 2010. Not a small process, since the winning effort isn't scheduled to be announced for another 6 months or so. In the meantime, our current contractor Raytheon is cranking up to hire next year's crew...all of the jobs were uploaded to Rayjobs at the beginning of March, and some of these have already been oversubscribed. The link to the jobs page is available on this RPSC site. For whatever reason, the Denver people have decided not to have a main job fair this year, as the hiring climate continues to change. If you're new to the process or even if not, I recommend you poke around on the Antarctic Memories message board to see what others have to say. Down on the ice, the last flight out of McMurdo did so on 22 February...unlike last season there is no "late flight" this year. 
And at Pole, in addition to all of the station closing and winterizing tasks, work continued through mid March to put the gunmetal grey cladding on the roof. At left you can see William Stiner (left) and Todd Adams working away on top of A1. This photo is only a small part of the panorama Ella Derbyshire took on 27 February (check out the big version!), she reports that it was -52°F with 9 knots, giving a wind chill in the -80s. Brr. But a nice view!
Closing time...well, I have to use the title of that Semisonic tune that closed out the final concert of the winter 2008 band last November. 16 February was the day. After a final couple of flights, including the last one (right, photo by Erik Shirokoff from the USAP photo library) the station became home to 43 winterovers...which by coincidence is exactly HALF the size of the 2005 winter crew. The last week all eyes had been on the scroll as the temperature slowly crept down toward the -58°F/-50°C mark which keeps the aircraft away (Steff Richter's weather page). As of 14 February the population was already down in the 40s, with a few folks still to leave and a few folks still to arrive (!). The winter crew--lots of new faces, and only about 4 folks who have previously wintered...and no Bill Spindler this time. At left is a photo from Jude Gregan of a station gathering on the first Saturday evening of winter (21 February)...astute Polies will note that the couch in the foreground contains 3 of the 4 repeating 2008 winterovers on station this year.
It seems that due to some sort of mixup, there will be a shortage of fresh eggs this winter...by the beginning of May the last one was gone. Gulp. But elsewhere, the design team has passed judgment on the Logistics Facility...conditional occupancy should allow the cargoids to start thinking about moving in. 
The back deck didn't count in that review, but it is about done as well. What a couple of months ago was the empty arch was being turned into a real back deck as seen in the mid-January view at left from Dave Smith...and there is siding on the LO facility....Snowwcrete was put in for the front deck and it was completed along with rework of the bulkhead and doors. 
Turns out the back deck required snowcrete as well. Elsewhwere out back, the structure for the SPTR-2 satellite antenna was completed in time for antenna installation and testing, that's what that thing is in the right photo by IT manager Gary Ferentchak from 5 January (USAP photo library); I have more construction photos here. This dome and antenna look suspiciously similar to the ones at Palmer Station--hopefully they'll deal with the demise of the ancient satellites currently in use. Across the runway, IceCube completed all 19 planned strings early, with the last hole drilled on 21 January and the string deployed shortly afterward. The team cleaned up, tested and winterized before leaving things to the winterovers. Oh by the way, on the way out they yanked out a bunch of AMANDA equipment on 3 February, but contrary to what had been reported, the project would continue to run for 3 more months. Read the status updates here; the last summer report was put up on 10 February.
Jerry Marty, the longtime NSF construction manager for the new elevated station, headed north for the last time shortly before Christmas, and when he departed the station he was saluted not with crossed swords but with crossed measuring tapes (right, IceCube photo by Mark Krasberg). On 11 February he presented the lecture "Building for Science at the South Pole" at the University of Delaware. The presentation was visible not only live and as a webcast, but also in the virtual world Second Life (!). Oh, and it was also saved as a podcast so you can listen at any time...(full story, photos and podcast link).
Up north, the Antarctic contract bidders are going through the final number crunching before the bids are due on 23 February...they already had to submit bunches and bunches of backup data last month (contract links and historical information).
The "Race to the Pole" happened, well actually all of them. In the event of that name, the Amundsen Omega 3 South Pole Race, seven 3-person teams competed over a 500-mile course, setting off on 5 January...six teams made it to Pole although only 5 finished officially. As happened 97 years ago, a Norwegian team, Team Missing Link finished first and a British team, QinetiQ came in second. It seems that he Norwegian-American Scientific Traverse crossed paths with them in the Discovery Lakes area on 6 January (photo at left by Ole Tveiten; blog entry here). These vehicles were carrying film crews and medical support staff. Note that the tire pressure was only 2.5 psi!
NGA American solo skiier Todd Carmichael tried to set a speed record from Hercules Inlet...after 39 days of travel he made it on 22 December. The previous record was 40 days, but his record didn't last long. The 3-man team Richard Weber, Ray Zahab and Kevin Vallely got a later start and beat his record, arriving on 8 January with a record time of 33 days, 23-1/2 hours. More info on these and other ventures is further down on this page. By now everyone who was going to show up has showed up, including the three Shackleton descendents that arrived from Ross Island via the Beardmore at 2200 on Sunday 18 January. The other portion of the team that was doing the "last 97 miles" was a few days behind. Another visitor was Monaco's Prince Albert and party, who joined Mike Horn's team at 88°51' S--they all left that trek campsite and flew close to Pole, where they all spent 2 days walking 22km to Pole, getting the Prince there at 0847 on the 14th. Mike, Børge Ousland and two others then flew back to the campsite to finish the longer walk to the Pole. Patriot Hills closed on the 28th. As for the real reason for the station, the Antarctic Sun recently published an excellent article "Field of Dreams" referring to the science projects that are being attracted there.
Back during high summer, the photo at left was a sign that one of the more visible construction projects proceeded--the scaffold that hung off the back of A4 all winter was moved to the next position as the siding installation resumed (photo by Andy Martinez/USAP photo library). The siding installation was pretty much completed on the walls; some work is scheduled for the winter to start on the roof panels. Over at DSL, the 3-year BICEP project was officially decommissioned in December...a bit of a sad time for some good people I know. SPT guy Brad Benson documented the 9 December farewell party in this blog entry. Meanwhile some 800+ miles north, another interesting and highly visible project has been underway uphill from Scott Base, the "wind farm" (right, conceptual photo). There will be 3 330 KW machines set up near Crater Hill, and a grid intertie between them, Scott Base and McM. This estimated to reduce fuel consumption by 11%. 
The foundations and site work were happening in the 2008-09 summer; work will continue through the winter and the turbines themselves will be erected next summer. This project is being spearheaded by the NZ program, although the USAP will do some of the site work and equipment movement. Here's an Antarctic Sun article...and more information from the NZ/Australian contractor Meridian Energy, to which the above right photo is credited. Also of interest to construction folks like me is this newspaper ad from the 15 December Dominion Post newspaper (Wellington NZ) looking for people to work on the project this winter.
Traverse updates...there have been 2 science traverses involved with the the station--one of these is of course ths "South Pole Traverse" which left McMurdo on 23 October on what was to be the first of 2 round trips. But...the "shear zone" on the Ross Ice Shelf was a bit worse than expected and during one period while blasting and filling cracks and crevasses they only made 20 miles in 9 days. They had been scheduled to reach Pole around 6 December... they actually pulled in on the 16th. They left the coast with seven tractors here's one of them in a photo by Ted Scambos of the Norwegian-American traverse. 
The tractors pulling, among other things, about 60 3,000 gallon fuel bladders on plastic sleds (photo near Ross Island by Robyn Waserman from the USAP photo library). Some of this fuel is for the traverse use and some to supply Pole. The traverse was scheduled to continue on to AGAP, but that leg was cancelled. The AGAP project finally got underway in full swing in late December, but the project teams figure they are about 2 weeks behind schedule (AGAP project page with news updates). AGAP is an international project to study the snow-covered Gamburtsev Mountains from the ground and from the air--this mountain range is COMPLETELY snow covered. 
The AGAP South camp was initially established by USAP last summer, the AGAP North camp was being operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD). A third "camp" was operated at Pole to serve as a site for high altitude acclimatization. The AGAP South camp received C-17 fuel airdrops. As of 20 December the North camp north of Dome A was set up, the first survey flights had been made by the specially equipped BAS Twin Otter. The team figured they were 15 days behind schedule, but they still completed about 50 survey flights, with the final ones on 10 January. They spent the following week demobilizing the camp before a scheduled departure date on the 17th. The AGAP North blogs are here from the BAS and the AAD. And speaking of airdrops, the C-17 also did one at Pole on the evening of 6 December (left, photo by Hermann Kolanoski of IceCube. The Chinese team that has been building the new Kunlun Station at Dome A (CCTV news article) hauled out the trash and crushed empty fuel drums when they returned to the coast in February. By the way, the new Chinese station is rather impressive considering it was set up from scratch in such a remote station, by only one traverse team and no air support. Check out what it looks like (Peoples Daily news article with a construction photo). Winter use is planned within a few years.
And then there is the second half of the Norwegian-American Scientific Traverse which staged out of Pole to go rebuild and repair their tractors that had been left at "Camp Winter" after 2 of the 4 tractors broke down. Some of the crew made it to the camp site, studied the snow and fixed/serviced the equipment, but their start was also delayed due to weather and poor landing conditions for the Basler at the camp. They packed up the camp and headed for Pole, arriving on 11 December. I met some of these folks at Pole before I left. Now the final traverse team of 12 assembled at Pole, prepared the equipment and supplies for the drive north to Troll, and headed out on the 22nd. As of mid February they were at their last research stop.
Yes, the bidders DID make it to the ice for their job walk, although their travel got delayed a day. They flew to the ice on Tuesday, 18 November and had a few hours at Pole the next day. I spoke with a couple of them in Christchurch. Here's my page of historical information and links relating to the contract bidding process...
Elsewhere in science, the 3-year BICEP telescope project in DSL wound down in November; the instrumentation was removed and shipped north. Coming next, perhaps in a year, is "BICEP 2" in the same location, along with "SPUD" on the former qUAD/DASI mount at MAPO. Here's an recent abstract which briefly describes these 2 projects. SPUD, also known as the Keck Array, recently was awarded a large grant from the Keck Foundation (press release). And on the other side of MAPO, a the old VIPER control room was to be fitted out to control the reactivated VLF antenna located west of the dark sector buildings.
Air transport news...a Bombardier Global Express business jet operated by TAG Aviation left Farnborough Airport in England at 2305 Pole time on Friday 21 November in a quest for a new 50-hour round-the-world over-the-poles record. After crossing the North Pole, it refueled at Whitehorse (Yukon, Canada), Majuro in the Marshall Islands, and Christchurch (0036 Sunday, Channel 3 news story), and passed over Pole later that day in the 11-hour flight to the next refueling stop in PA. The last stop was at Sal, Cape Verde. They ultimately completed the the effort by returning to Farnborough in 52 hours and 32 minutes (news story). There were 8 on board, including 5 pilots a flight engineer, in-flight coordinator, and an observer Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) which ratified the world record on 23 March 2009. The previous over-the-poles record of 54:07 had been set by a Pan Am 747SP aircraft back on 28-31 October 1977. Oh, also, the specially modified 109th ANG completed the installation of new 8-bladed propellers on the first LC-130--Skier 92 to be exact. The first operational flight was on 16 September...the new props reduce noise and vibration and may reduce fuel consumption by at least 5 percent. The aircraft was spotted in ChCh on 16 November and was expected at Pole the following week. Here's a copy of a Hamilton Sundstrand press release; the photo at right is courtesy of TSgt Derrick Irish; also here is an earlier Antarctic Sun article.
And back in October a few days before the first flight landed, we had an overflight by an FAA Challenger 601 inspection aircraft--basically a business jet--to certify the navigational aids of the skiway, which at the time was in the process was being relocated. The result is the photo at left...here's more information and links to a couple of other news stories.
The accident at Australia's Davis Station (on the coast directly south of Perth) was in the news again, as a NYANG LC-130 medevac mission headed there from McM the evening of 4 November, arriving about 0200 SP time on the 5th after a 4-1/2 hour flight. The aircraft, with a medical team on board stayed on deck overnight and then successfully flew the patient the 1500 miles to Hobart, arriving early on the 6th SP time (NSF press release and AAD press release). The story--the Davis w/o cook, 31-year-old Dwayne Rooke of Tasmania, fell off a quad bike on a field trip 15 miles from the base, breaking his pelvis and both ankles. He was in serious but stable condition as he waited for...the icebreaker Aurora Australis, which was diverted from its course to Casey and headed for Davis. A second doctor and other assistants were flown to Davis by helo from the ship on 1 November when the ship got in range and the weather improved Here's an earlier 1 November AAD news release. At that time the plans were to fly him back to the icebreaker when weather improved again.
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.
Pole land cargo traverses in the works...in October 2002 NSF flew a specially equipped D8 from Christchurch to McMurdo aboard a C17...this equipment was be used to prepare a road south towards the Leverett Glacier, eventually hopefully to Pole. This is to augment the LC-130 flights for station construction cargo as well as for ICE CUBE and forthcoming science projects. More information...
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 will have a ground shield that is larger than the Dome (it is being built by Temcor, the same company that built the dome...).
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 (NATICE 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.
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 Spanish word of the day--yes, insulator foreman Richard "Chico" Perales was back at McMurdo providing a whimsical view of events on the ice for the 2003-04 summer. Archives are here.
The news page of the Antarctic Connection is updated at least twice weekly with current news from and about Antarctica.
The Antarctic Sun is now up in a new format for the 2007-08 austral summer, 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 be read offline in the print newsletter of the Antarctican Society. Highly recommended, here's a recent Antarctic Sun article about how you can join up.
[top] | [home](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...
For most of this decade until October 2008, things were simple. Pole used the MARISAT/GOES terminal, originally constructed in 2000-01 (left) to communicate with 3 satellites that used to be geosynchronous. The RF building and MARISAT/GOES terminal 1 mile south of the station were first turned on in 2001, but they suffered through cold weather mechanical and electronics problems off and on ever since. A radome was added in 2004-05 (photos), but that didn't cure everything...during the 2008 winter the gear drive system failed again...but this time a MacGyver effort by the satcom tech and station mechanics got things rebuilt and running (Antarctic Sun article).
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 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 
prefer--TDRS is Tracking and Data Relay Satellite and TDRSS is Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System) also disappeared from service. The last TWTA (traveling wave tube amplifier) failed, and NASA moved it to another temporary orbit for decommissioning. The last day of service was 21 October 2009 (Spaceflight Now news article). From here on, in addition to GOES, the station is using 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 will be available for much shorter periods on an ever-changing schedule, and at a greater expense to NSF. Not all of the "above-the-horizon" time (what typically appeared on the old scroll satellite availability page) will actually be available to USAP--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 SkyNet-4c commercial satellite, which is slowly increasing in visibility at Pole. Here is the contract award announcement, and an unofficial IceCube blog presentation about the current and future satellite situation.
In addition to the larger geosynchronous satellites there is, of course, Iridium, which is always available for official/emergency phone calls, and sometimes 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 even more geeky information
-the enhanced satellite visibility chart (PDF file)
-the old link to satellite times and network information from the folks at Richmond (South Miami, formerly Malabar) which now only includes GOES
-a page from AMANDA with descriptions and photos of mostly historical satellites and their earth stations
-an excellent June 2004 virtual tour of the RF building and antenna platform, complete with narrated video, featuring satcom tech Eyvind Flater, brought to you by NOAA tech Glen Kinoshita.
[top] | [home]Well, that big Antarctic sports event, what is now known as the Antarctic Ice Marathon (and half and ultra) took place most recently at Patriot Hills on 15-16 December 2009 Pole time, with a total of 20 participants, the field included 3 women and 2 ultra finishers. Temperatures were mostly in the +20s (F) with blue skies and little or no wind. Irishman Richard Donovan (a familiar name in this event) won the 100km ultra in 18:59:56, while the winning 26.2 mile time was 4:46:50 by American Jason Wolfe. Actually that is a fairly respectable time for ordinary marathon runners in the real world. The event will happen again in mid-December 2010, online registration is here for only US$16,950 ex PA.
In addition to the private tourist flights to Patriot Hills, Pole, and the Mt. Vinson base camp operated by Antarctic Network International (ANI)/Antarctic Logisitics and Exploration (ALE), a newer British based company White Desert, has established a tourist destination "Whichaway Camp" near Novo (no, nowhere near the Whichaway Nunataks) with penquin colonies and mountains nearby. 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."
Yet another of those diplomatic games that sometimes resembles a sporting event, the Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting, otherwise known as ATCM XXXII, took place in Baltimore between 6 and 17 April 2009, complete with a presentation by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The major result of this year's meeting was an agreement to regulate cruise ship tourism. These days these meetings happen annually; last year's meeting was in the Ukraine. America hasn't been the venue since 1984, when the meeting was held in Washington, DC. I've been through some of the reports and resolutions on the official Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) site and haven't found anything earth-shattering, but I may have missed something. The sponsoring country site is here; the meeting is subtitled "50 years of Peace and Science." In addition to the smoke-free meeting rooms, a number of public events started the weekend before the official meeting--here's the NSF press release announcing the meeting and the events.
What NGA expeditions are up for 2009-10 or later...actually thanks to the economy it is a rather short list, with some cancellations already:
[For much better coverage, watch thepoles.com, run by Thomas and Tina Sjogren...or the individual expedition websites. Also note that all distances listed below are in statute miles (5,280 feet, 7/8 nautical miles or 1.6 km].
Here are my records of the 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.
