Ob Tube and Solar Panels

These next few posts will be of old photos I would have liked to have posted earlier.


The Observation Tube or Ob Tube is a tube they insert into the sea ice just a short walk off the coast. It is something I hadn't heard of until this trip, but apparently they have done it at least once before in the last few years. It is only open early in the season as the tube itself actually hangs from the sea ice and would sink if the sea ice were to break up.

It was definitely one of my neatest experiences here, but probably also the least impressive in photos.
In this first photo you can see the tube you climb down. I barely fit into the tube and climbing up was definitely challenge. At the bottom there is a box you can sit on in a sort of hexagonal room with windows on each face so you get a 360 degree view. I did this in late November I think and the 24-hour sunlight had started to help a lot of sea organisms to flourish so the visibility in the water wasn't as legendary as it is early in the season but was still fairly impressive.

My camera started fogging up almost instantly. The water was about 29 degrees and the Ob Tube was probably pretty close to that. I was standing on the surface for a while and it was a bit cooler up there so the cold camera was ready to condense whatever moisture there was in the tube. There were multiple panes of glass which were a bit dirty which also showed up a lot more in photos than in real life.

These two photos show brinicles which are like stalactites on the underside of the sea ice. They are hollow tubes and form as the sea water freezes on the underside of the sea ice. During the freezing process salt is forced out of the water. This makes the surrounding water saltier and thus denser. Because it is saltier, the freezing temperature is lower so it doesn't freeze, and because it is denser it sinks. As it encounters less salty water below, it causes that water to freeze. The brinicle is actually a tube with the salty, cold water flowing down the middle and freezing the surrounding water at it's edges.

There's an interesting video of the process and effects on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAupJzH31tc

I found out that somebody had to poke holes in all of the cells of the honeycomb backing of our solar panels and was glad it wasn't me. There is some concern that the sealed cells will build up pressure as the balloon travels to float and could damage the solar cells. The maker of these panels actually buys solar panels for homes, removes the cells and then makes new lighter weight panels. Each panel has three frames, and we have eight total panels on the gondola. This first photo shows most of one panel.

Now for something completely different. I found this youtube video talking about some of the Weddell seal research that is being done here. At least one of the researchers in the video is still here and gave the talk that I saw on Weddell seal research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qlaBS7SQ4Q

Mele Kalikimaka

Merry Christmas to those up north. My apologies for not keeping this up to date. The internet has been pretty slow when I've had time to go on it. Now that ANITA is flying, I should be able to upload some more photos and work on the blog.

Here are some photos of the ANITA III launch. We scrubbed a number of times due to weather. The balloon launch requires low wind up to about 2000 feet. They would also like the wind to be blowing in a consistent direction up to that level. The wind also needs to blow in a consistent direction so they can lay out the flight train. Here they want things to be below 5 knots. It's also tough to predict the weather as it can vary dramatically over short distances and there aren't many weather stations. We had one attempt that had blowing snow as we came over the transition onto the ice shelf, but dead calm at LDB which is only about 7 miles away over flat ice. However the winds up at about 500 feet were blowing pretty good so we couldn't launch that day.

We generally showed up about 7-8 hours before the actual time of the launch attempt to start all the checkouts.

I'll see if I can get a video of the launch that I can share for those of you who weren't able to see it.

Here is the balloon right after release from the spool. The balloon itself connects almost directly to the parachute which is the orange thing in the middle. The balloon inflates as it rises due to the decrease in pressure as you go up. They have a collar on the balloon itself to make a "bubble".

The wind had shifted direction well before launch, but after they laid everything out so they knew they were going to be doing a bit of driving. It is always impressive to see. There are times they have to back up because the winds are so light, and times that they almost run out of balloon pad because the winds are so strong.

In this photo you can see the crew chief pulling the cable to release the pin that lets ANITA off of the Boss.

Our solar panels deployed flawlessly. I'll also see if I can get the video of the test of that in Palestine.

It flew just about directly overhead from where I was watching. After the incident in Australia a few years ago where a payload crashed into the vehicle that an unaffiliated photographer had parked at the edge of the launch pad even though he had been asked to move it, there have been many changes regarding safety. One of the more frustrating ones is the requirement that we be inside a building if the flight train is laid out pointing within about +/- 60 degrees of the viewing area. There was one scrubbed attempt that we were required to be inside the building for. I was glad we didn't launch that, but I know some of my coworkers would have liked to have been able to leave sooner.

Lastly, a photo of the remaining ANITAns at our Christmas dinner. I believe most of the others that were down here made it back North on Christmas Eve thanks to the crossing of the dateline. Dinner was delicious as always.

First launch attempt is tomorrow

Sorry for not keeping this updated. At this point we will be making our first launch attempt tomorrow. It probably would not launch before 10am local time 12-11-14.

Launch viewing should be available here:

http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm

I'll try to get another post up soon, but it will probably be an early start for me tomorrow, so I don't know when I will get around to it.

Thanks.