Last Post

My last adventure to Antarctica is complete and so now is the blog on it. It definitely was an amazing experience that I feel very privileged to have been able to take part of. Thank you for following my blog; Antarctica is a place that I would love to take so many people, but I am grateful I can't as it would not be the same if it were more accessible. With that in mind, I tried to capture the experience as best I could. However, like so many other things in life, pictures and words can't really do it justice. If the opportunity ever presented itself, I would definitely go down again in a heartbeat and hope that at the very least, my experience there wouldn't deter you from doing the same.

My ride out of McMurdo. I was really surprised the C-17 landed, as the visibility was pretty poor with the falling snow. However, we did have the president of Raytheon Polar Services on our flight out, so perhaps they had a little extra incentive to land. The temperatures in McMurdo had been quite warm and one C-17 flight had actually cut a 6 inch deep 5000 foot long groove into the ice with its landing gear. Because of that, the flight out was at 5 in the morning to try to take advantage of the few degree difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures. The crew also had to go up and sweep off all the snow of the wings before take off.














I can think of few other countries that would be nicer to return to from Antarctica than New Zealand. This is a photo of the beach at Aramoana outside of Dunedin. Sheep were on the hills in the background but you can't really see them.














This is looking across the mouth of the harbor at Harrington Point where there is an Albatross colony.














This anchor snagged the fishing gear of generations of fisherman before being pulled out of the harbor in 1978 and presented to the city of Port Chalmers.














Looking out from Port Chalmers in the direction of Aramoana.















The memorial to Scott and his crew at Port Chalmers. Dunedin was the last place Scott stopped before setting off to Antarctica on his ill-fated quest to make it to the South Pole.

Tunnel Tour

My last night at the South Pole I was able to get a tour of the tunnels under the station. As part of the construction of the new station, a tunnel system was created to supply the water and provide a means of sewage disposal. The tunnels are about 30 feet underground.


Here you can see the walls of the tunnel bowing in slightly due to the weight of the snow on top. Eventually they will need to shave the walls. The lights in the tunnel are LED lights which have trouble in the 60 below temperatures. It takes a few minutes of flashing before they warm up enough to stay on constantly.


















Here you can see the layout of the tunnel system. The main tunnel corridor is about 3000 feet long I think.


















Here is a shot of one of the branches coming off of the main tunnel. Eventually they will put in a rodwell in this tunnel which will supply the water to the station. After they have used up the life of the rodwell they fill the void with sewage.



















Here's the helmet that the miners signed. To make the tunnels NSF hired miners from New Mexico and Colorado to use chainsaws to cut blocks of snow out. Workers would then haul the blocks out on sleds. After they went through with chainsaws, the miners used a million dollar machine that had a six foot wide rotating head on the end of a boom that would shave the ice. They would then gradually move the head up and down to make the 10 foot tall tunnel. A system of pipes and holes going to the surface were used to blow the shavings out.














Here is a shot of what the pipe looks like. There two pipes in the tunnels. One supplies water to the station and the other takes the sewage out. They run a heated glycol line next to the water and sewage lines to keep them from freezing.















The tunnel system also houses various shrines that the winterovers make. I think you need to be isolated from civilization for 9 months for many of them to make any sense.














































This is a sturgeon that the Russians gave to people in McMurdo. It was eventually thrown away before somebody found it in the trash and it made it's way to the South Pole.
































This is looking down the hole in the Rodwell that supplies water to the station. The blue lines were probably about an inch and a half in diameter.















This is a diagram of a rodwell. Basically they use a pump to circulate hot water to make a large bulb in the ice. Eventually they pump so much water out that the rodwell sits hundreds of feet below the surface and it takes so much energy just to get the water out that they start a new one. I guess it takes about 3 years to make a rodwell which then last 7-10 years on average. The bulb may get to about 100 feet in diamter and be about 500 feet deep. After they are done pumping water out they hook up the sewer line and fill it in with sewage which takes about 7-10 years to fill. I was definitely able to tell which tunnel had the active sewer line. I'll add that to my list of Antarctic smells which previously included only diesel.




























The air temperature in the tunnels is near constant -60 F. I took this photo at an angle, but the needle was right on -60. In the summer it might seem cold, but it can be 40 degrees warmer than the outside temperature in the winter.


















This is a photo of me after the end of the tunnel tour.














We were also able to get a tour of the arches. The arches are all buried structures that house the fuel, supplies, and maintenance facilities for the station. This arch houses all the fuel, about 450,000 gallons I believe. The walls are beginning to bow in places, but it's hard to see in this photo. My camera was having some trouble after the hour or so in the tunnels, so it would work very slowly.














Here you can see the spiral staircase escape in the fuel arch. In the winter, it's a popular staircase to use because it cuts down on the walk outside to one of the buildings. The ice crystals are formed over time from the moisture from exhalations.



















Here you can see the indoor food storage. The forklift they have can't reach the top shelf so there is a lot of unused space.














Fuel tank for the generator


















One of three generators. They rotate between the engines every few thousand hours of run time. The waste heat from the generators is used to heat water, supply heat for the rodwell, and dry clothes.

Various photos

The morning that we were flying out, we had to go back out to the testbed site because there was some concern that are instrumentation was getting too hot. I was unconvinced and remain so, but we removed some insulation from the box and stacked the outside with snow to help reflect the light.















The station hallways are decorated with the photos of all the winterover crews, memorials to those who died at the South Pole, and various other plaques and mementos. Here are two that I thought might be of interest.

































The display case with former South Pole markers




















The station reflected in the sphere.















This is the photo I was trying to get earlier showing the new and old pole markers. The blocks of snow in the background are for a ice carving competition that I missed.

IceCube

Our project, ARA is designed to detect the radio signals from neutrino interactions at the South Pole. This year we were there to install a testbed array which would allow us to get a feel for the engineering challenges as well as get the some characteristics of the area where we would start installing the actual array. We were unofficially piggybacking off of the IceCube experiment, which just completed the installation of the last string while I was down there. The IceCube experiment looks for flashes of light the result from neutrino interactions in the ice. The entire experiment costed about $270 million and took ten years to complete. Basically they melt 2 foot diameter holes in the ice that are 2.5km deep and then lower down strings of sensors into the holes before the holes freeze in. The entire array consists of 86 strings with 60 sensors on each. A diagram of the array can be found here, the image is too big for the blog. IceCube has a good website for the experiment that you can browse here.



In this photo, which I found online, you can see the firn drill. This drill is used to get through the first 50 meters or so of snow. They pump hot water through the coils and I believe some is sprayed out to help lubricate the drill. It takes about 20 hours to drill the first 50 meters because they want a real straight hole. The firn then makes a sharp transition into ice, and the drillers know they have reached this level when they can see water starting to pool over the top of the drill down the hole.




















































I took this photo of them lowering down the last string. In the background you can see the ice drill. After the firn drill has made it into the ice, they lower down the ice drill with a weight stack below it. The weight stack has a nozzle on the end that sprays hot water. The drill camp can produce 200 gallons of 80 degree C water at 1000psi each minute. To do this it takes a lot of fuel, I believe 4,000-7,000 gallons per hole which translates to about two LC-130 flights just to get the fuel in. It takes another flight to get all the hardware down for each hole. The holes end up being about 2500 meters deep and it takes the ice drill 20 hours to go the 2500 meters.



















Here you can see the hose reel in the foreground with the drill tower in the background. The drillers label each hole by the number of hours they have to lower the string in before the hole diameter becomes too narrow. I believe this last hole was a 24 hour hole, but it generally takes 10 hours or so to lower the string down if they don't run into any problems.
















Here you can see the signal and power cable fro the hole being fed off of the reel into the tower.















Here is a photo of the last DOM (Digital Optical Module) with the last string still being lowered down the hole. The DOM is made of a glass pressure housing with some electronics and a photomultiplier tube (PMT) which detects the flashes of light. The PMT is so sensitive that it can detect the trace amounts of radioactive decay that comes from radioactive isotopes in the sand used to make the glass.



















This is shot taken by a coworker looking down the last borehole. Once the last DOM is attached the entire string is lowered over a kilometer. Basically the entire array looks at a 1 cubic kilometer section of ice that is over a kilometer below the surface. This ice is extraordinarily clear however there are layers of dust in the ice that complicate the analysis. The drillers do have a life preserver available to throw to somebody if they did happen to fall down the hole. However the person probably wouldn't be in good shape because it's about a 50 meter fall and the water in the hole is at 80 degrees or so. The hole takes weeks to entirely freeze in. It freezes from the top down, and the temperature at the bottom is only slightly below freezing while at the top the temperature may be 60 below.

Well I'm nearing the end of this adventure to Antarctica. I am scheduled to leave the South Pole tomorrow and fly out of McMurdo the following day. We accomplished all that we needed to accomplish for work and the system is running. If I can find the time I may be posting a few more entries before I go to cover things I never got around to, if not I may post them when I get back to the real world.

A shot of some sastrugi. It's fascinating to me to see all the different contours of the sastrugi but I can imagine to anybody who has something other than sastrugi to look at it not being too exciting.















Another type of drill in use in Antarctica is the RAM drill. I believe RAM stands for rapid air movement, but I could be mistaken. Basically the drill uses compressors to force a lot of air through tube to rotate the cutting head as well as blow the snow dust out of the hole. It sounds simple, but the devil is in the details. Anyways, this type of drill is being considered for the full array. I like the drill because it drills down quite quickly, takes only a few minutes to go 50 meters versus almost an hour with the hot water drill. However the drill has a smaller diameter than we would like, 4 inches versus 6, and during the test runs at the drill camp the drill stopped working a little over 50 meters down and the holes we will want are 200 meters. The problem is the compressed air leaks out into the firn, compacted snow, and doesn't blow the dust out of the hole. In other applications they have tried to install liners into the hole, but I don't know that that will work for what we want.



















Here you can see the drill in action, the weather wasn't the best for capturing the plume, but it shoots a good 20 feet into the air. You can see the train of three compressors attached to the drill.















Here's a photo of the testbed shortly before we left it for the last time. You can see what we call the "death ray" in the foreground and the station in the distance. Not nearly as interesting to photograph or look at as a balloon launch, but we're done.














This is a photo of my boss taking a photo from the spot I took the previous photo if that makes sense. He also found the time and motivation to make a carving to watch over the testbed.

New Pole Marker

We are almost done with installing all the testbed equipment, but we continue to make changes to what we have done already, so I may be working up until the very end which is not something I look forward to. I am scheduled to leave here in two days and it hasn't really sunk in yet.

Water is supplied to the station by melting ice in various wells near the station. Apparently one of the pumps got stuck a while ago and so the drill crew is using the snow melter and boiler to supply hot water to try to free the pump. The drillers joke that once again it's a fine example of science supporting logistics. That whole operation started yesterday and at noon it was announced that we could no longer take showers or do laundry as a result of the work being done. I have hard time figuring out how the situation could have been made any worse by trying to free the pump with hot water, but I guess maybe it has.



Each year the winter-overs or "night crew", the 50 or so people who keep the station going from February to October, are tasked with designing and making a new South Pole marker. The 2 miles of ice that we are on moves about 33 feet a year (which works out to about an inch a day) and on January 1st they have a ceremony unveiling the new marker and marking the new Geographic South Pole.


I couldn't quite get the shot, but in this photo you can see the label for the new marker and you can see the pole of the old marker in the background to the right of the legs of the lady in the green jacket.



















The marker this year was designed commemorate the 100th anniversary of the year the Amundsen made it to the South Pole




















It's a depiction of a sextant which was used to measure the angle of the sun to determine the latitude. I believe Amundsen and his crew spent 4 days measuring the angle of the sun to determine if in fact they were at the South Pole. There are 47 degree marks on the sextant representing the 47 people who winter-overed.



















These aren't the greatest photos of it, but there was a pretty good crowd out there for the ceremony.



































The marker is moving further away from the station and further from the ceremonial South Pole.

Happy New Year's

I have been fairly busy out at the testbed site for the last few days. We were able to lower down all the antennas down the boreholes, however it appears one antenna got damaged during the trip and so we will be going back out to pull it out and repair it. We have been quite lucky with the weather as it doesn't get much nicer at the South Pole than the calm, clear days we have been having recently.

This photo was taken by a coworker of mine from the roof of the ICL as I head out to the testbed site with another coworker. The bright white pile of snow is on the edge of the testbed site.















A coworker took this photo. The fungus on my face is from ice condensing on some of my hair sticking out of my balaclava.



















The drilling equipment ran over some of our cable trenches before we laid down the cable, so they were kind enough to open them up with the hot water from the drill.





















This is a photo of what I believe to be a lower tangent arc appearing behind the station.