Published in the Antarctic Sun
The first Singaporean expedition to Antarctica reached the Pole New Year’s Eve, after 57 days of sledging. The team, none of whom had ever skied before, traveled nearly 700 miles from Horseshoe Valley just north of Patriot Hills.
“It’s an extra challenge for Singapore,” said team member David Lim. The small southeast Asian country is in the tropics. Its highest natural point is only 500 feet above sea level.
“We have a little extra gap to bridge,” Lim said.
Last year several members of the group climbed Mount Everest, which caused a national sensation in the tiny city-state.
The public interest and available sponsorship dollars convinced the team to attempt a ski and sledge journey from 80 degrees south to the South Pole.
The planning began shortly after they returned from Everest, in May 1998. “We rested for one or two months, and got restless again,” said team member Khoo Swee Chiow.
In July 1998, they began preparation. In May 1999, they trained with British polar adventurer Roger Mear in Greenland.
“We didn’t know how to sledge,” Lim said. “And we had zero skiing ability.”
From that dubious beginning in Greenland to a second training trip in New Zealand in July, they felt prepared, but Antarctica still offered a challenge.
The first trial was arriving on the continent. Weather kept them in Punta Arenas, Chile, for nine days beyond their intended departure date. During that time, they met some others involved in Antarctic expeditions this year: the British and Australian team whose leaky fuel ruined their chances of a continental traverse.
They finally began their journey from 80 degrees south on November 4. Antarctica was just introducing itself.
“Most of us here have not been to this kind of cold,” said Khoo, a software engineer with Singapore Airlines. The team endured cold reaching minus 67 F, and a 46 mph headwind.
At 87 degrees south, they hit bad weather that forced them to hunker down for two days, the longest delay of the trip.
“Eighty-seven to 88, that was like the South Pole putting up her last defense,” Khoo said.
On the plateau before reaching the Pole, they met the British-sponsored “Last Degree” team who were skiing from 89 degrees south to the Pole.
The Singaporean prime minister is their primary patron, encouraging their mission “to promote the spirit of adventure in Singaporean youth,” said expeditioner Ang Yan Choon.
They left the Pole in a private Twin Otter operated by Adventure Network International on January 3. But a number of items would remain in the ANI cache at the Pole.
“Anything that’s edible or usable we’ll leave here for others,” Choon said.
The team will travel back to Singapore via Chile and New York. Their next adventure destination is uncertain at the moment, though the team all smiled when they thought of a “next time.”
“The world is pretty big,” Lim said.
Sunday, January 9, 2000
The pull of the Pole
Published in the Antarctic Sun
At South Pole Station, in the middle of the polar plateau, people keep showing up. While most fly here on LC-130s, there are a growing number who can say they got here by land.
Just the other day, seven men in bright orange jackets appeared outside the station. They were Argentinians who had driven snowmobiles from Belgrano Station near the Weddell Sea, at the same latitude as McMurdo. It had taken them 38 days.
The previous day, nine skiers had arrived from the Weddell Sea coast. Among that group were the first British women to travel overland to the pole, the first married couple to do so and the first Australian to visit both poles.
A significant spot in an otherwise featureless landscape, the South Pole is an appealing goal for Antarctic adventurers traveling on the frozen plateau.
Mike Thornewill, of the multinational expedition, said he has been trying to get here for 30 years.
“I couldn’t get a plane so I had to walk,” he said. His wife Fiona, one of the first British women to get to the pole on skis, was equally pleased.
“It’s such a privilege to be here,” she said.
The expedition was a fundraiser for the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity. They have already raised $150,000. It’s part of their effort to involve large numbers of people in the endeavor, which saw them travel 730 miles in 61 days, each pulling a 200-pound sledge.
“If you’re going to take money from the community to do something, you should give something back,” Mike Thornewill said.
But the effort is also for the individuals on the team.
“We have a dream and an earnest desire to make our dream come true,” Thornewill said.
For the Argentinians it was different.
They were on a scientific traverse and intended to camp near the pole for a couple of days before returning to their station, said expedition doctor Nicolas Bernardi.
Other expeditions to arrive at the pole, or to declare it as a destination, included several groups hoping to celebrate New Year’s at the end of the Earth. Four Singaporeans and four British arrived on skis in time, while nine others flew in from Patriot Hills just to spend midnight at the pole.
The conditions continental traverses face today are very similar to those the early explorers endured. Clothing and shelter are of better materials, but hauling sledges across sastrugi isn’t much easier.
Food requirements are the same, if not higher, now. Safety margins are larger, requiring more supplies “just in case.”
Living conditions are still quite spare, the Thornewills agreed.
“I’d forgotten what a clean cup looked like,” Mike said.
Even in these tough conditions, though, it could be worse.
“It’s kinder here than in the Arctic,” said Grahame Murphy, the first Australian to visit both poles. He went to the North Pole in 1994, and would gladly trade the Arctic sea ice for sastrugi on the southern polar plateau.
The desire for primacy in arriving at the pole results in detailed descriptions involving nationality, gender, level of support, method of transportation and the route traveled. For example, Catharine Hartley and Fiona Thornewill were the first British women to arrive at the pole on skis from the coast.
When expeditions arrive at the pole, they are welcomed by station staff, who usually have had some warning of the arrival. They’re treated to hot drinks in the galley, and are often shown around the station’s science and support facilities.
It’s a welcome quite different from the one Scott saw, with a Norwegian flag flying atop an empty tent in the middle of the white desert.
At South Pole Station, in the middle of the polar plateau, people keep showing up. While most fly here on LC-130s, there are a growing number who can say they got here by land.
Just the other day, seven men in bright orange jackets appeared outside the station. They were Argentinians who had driven snowmobiles from Belgrano Station near the Weddell Sea, at the same latitude as McMurdo. It had taken them 38 days.
The previous day, nine skiers had arrived from the Weddell Sea coast. Among that group were the first British women to travel overland to the pole, the first married couple to do so and the first Australian to visit both poles.
A significant spot in an otherwise featureless landscape, the South Pole is an appealing goal for Antarctic adventurers traveling on the frozen plateau.
Mike Thornewill, of the multinational expedition, said he has been trying to get here for 30 years.
“I couldn’t get a plane so I had to walk,” he said. His wife Fiona, one of the first British women to get to the pole on skis, was equally pleased.
“It’s such a privilege to be here,” she said.
The expedition was a fundraiser for the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity. They have already raised $150,000. It’s part of their effort to involve large numbers of people in the endeavor, which saw them travel 730 miles in 61 days, each pulling a 200-pound sledge.
“If you’re going to take money from the community to do something, you should give something back,” Mike Thornewill said.
But the effort is also for the individuals on the team.
“We have a dream and an earnest desire to make our dream come true,” Thornewill said.
For the Argentinians it was different.
They were on a scientific traverse and intended to camp near the pole for a couple of days before returning to their station, said expedition doctor Nicolas Bernardi.
Other expeditions to arrive at the pole, or to declare it as a destination, included several groups hoping to celebrate New Year’s at the end of the Earth. Four Singaporeans and four British arrived on skis in time, while nine others flew in from Patriot Hills just to spend midnight at the pole.
The conditions continental traverses face today are very similar to those the early explorers endured. Clothing and shelter are of better materials, but hauling sledges across sastrugi isn’t much easier.
Food requirements are the same, if not higher, now. Safety margins are larger, requiring more supplies “just in case.”
Living conditions are still quite spare, the Thornewills agreed.
“I’d forgotten what a clean cup looked like,” Mike said.
Even in these tough conditions, though, it could be worse.
“It’s kinder here than in the Arctic,” said Grahame Murphy, the first Australian to visit both poles. He went to the North Pole in 1994, and would gladly trade the Arctic sea ice for sastrugi on the southern polar plateau.
The desire for primacy in arriving at the pole results in detailed descriptions involving nationality, gender, level of support, method of transportation and the route traveled. For example, Catharine Hartley and Fiona Thornewill were the first British women to arrive at the pole on skis from the coast.
When expeditions arrive at the pole, they are welcomed by station staff, who usually have had some warning of the arrival. They’re treated to hot drinks in the galley, and are often shown around the station’s science and support facilities.
It’s a welcome quite different from the one Scott saw, with a Norwegian flag flying atop an empty tent in the middle of the white desert.
Sunday, December 26, 1999
Running with the dogs
Published in the Antarctic Sun
Dogs. Roald Amundsen sped to the South Pole behind them. Robert Scott couldn’t get them to work. Shackleton’s men, unable to feed them, shot them.
Peter Cleary, now Scott Base’s operations manager, took care of Antarctic dog teams and worked with them for three years. One of those years, in the late 1970s, he was at Scott Base. For the other two, in the mid-1980s, he was with the British Antarctic Survey on the Antarctic Peninsula.
“My main job was field support,” Cleary said. In 10 summers on the Ice, this is his second season actually stationed at a base.
He remembers the dogs fondly. He was the handler for two teams of up to 12 dogs each in the summer of 1978-1979 and the winter of 1979. The dogs were big West Greenland huskies, bred for stamina rather than speed.
Though not used as extensively in the late 1980s as they had been in earlier years, Cleary said the dogs were involved in work on the sea ice and in crevasse areas.
The dogs were slower than vehicles, which gave them a safety edge. “Some of them became
aware of things like crevasses,” Cleary said. They would stop rather than go into a dangerous
place. Others, he said, would fall into any hole that happened to be in front of them.
The dogs were around mainly because they always had been. “They were a historical artifact,” Cleary said. “Psychologically, they were really good on the base.”
In winter, during the few days a month with constant moonlight, running the dogs was easy. In darkness, though, it was tough.
Just before Winfly, Cleary would take a team to Cape Royds, partly to get them into condition for the pulling season, but also to check out the sea ice conditions, which were sometimes treacherous.
“You can always pull a wet dog out, shake him a bit, and make him run around a while,” Cleary said.
Handling dogs was a challenge for Cleary, who had some experience with farm dogs in New Zealand, but considered his work on-the-job training.
After three years, he said, “I could consider myself a mildly competent dog handler,” but gave more credit to the dogs than to himself.
The dogs, he said, were very much individuals and had to be understood. Notes from previous years’ handlers were helpful, but experience was the real key.
It was a chance Robert Scott never gave himself. Dog handling, Cleary said, is a hard thing to learn.
Scott was versatile and tried dogs, ponies and motor vehicles. But he had particular problem with the dogs.
“They’re not pets and never were,” Cleary said. That was likely part of Scott’s problem. Scott was unable to think of the dogs as workers. Instead, he thought of them as companions on the journey.
“If he’d put as much effort into maintaining his dogs as he spent maintaining the ponies, he would have had a lot more success with the dogs,” Cleary said.
Cleary had a good measure of success, traveling up to 1,300 miles in a single season, over to White Island, up the Blue Glacier, and to Cape MacKay. But he stresses that those trips were low-key compared to sledging seasons in the heyday of dog teams, which saw multiple journeys of over 2,300 miles throughout the summer.
They always wanted to work, which often made for a bit of an exciting start to a trip.
“In the morning there’s always this insane first half mile,” Cleary said. But mostly they were
slower than vehicles, which wasn’t all bad. “Sometimes you need to slow down around here,” he said.
The dogs also pulled pranks, Cleary said. “Their favorite thing was to cock their leg on people’s legs and piss in people’s mukluks.”
But the dogs became a political issue. During the summer, they ate the food waste from McMurdo and Scott Base. But during the winter they ate seal. The meat was good for its high
fat content, but killing seals became unpopular.
In 1984 at a meeting in Madrid, the countries with Antarctic programs decided to phase out the use of dogs.
In 1986 New Zealand’s dogs left Scott Base for good. “I think at the time we didn’t really realize it was the end of an era,” Cleary said. “The whole business of their removal wasn’t just with the Scott Base dogs.”
The British, who had used their dogs very intensively through the early 1970s, didn’t take their dogs out until 1993.
When they left, Cleary said, “it was a sad day but it had a degree of inevitability. I regret they’re not here.”
He still misses one of his favorite times with the dogs, “listening to them in full throat on a moonlit night.”
Dogs. Roald Amundsen sped to the South Pole behind them. Robert Scott couldn’t get them to work. Shackleton’s men, unable to feed them, shot them.
Peter Cleary, now Scott Base’s operations manager, took care of Antarctic dog teams and worked with them for three years. One of those years, in the late 1970s, he was at Scott Base. For the other two, in the mid-1980s, he was with the British Antarctic Survey on the Antarctic Peninsula.
“My main job was field support,” Cleary said. In 10 summers on the Ice, this is his second season actually stationed at a base.
He remembers the dogs fondly. He was the handler for two teams of up to 12 dogs each in the summer of 1978-1979 and the winter of 1979. The dogs were big West Greenland huskies, bred for stamina rather than speed.
Though not used as extensively in the late 1980s as they had been in earlier years, Cleary said the dogs were involved in work on the sea ice and in crevasse areas.
The dogs were slower than vehicles, which gave them a safety edge. “Some of them became
aware of things like crevasses,” Cleary said. They would stop rather than go into a dangerous
place. Others, he said, would fall into any hole that happened to be in front of them.
The dogs were around mainly because they always had been. “They were a historical artifact,” Cleary said. “Psychologically, they were really good on the base.”
In winter, during the few days a month with constant moonlight, running the dogs was easy. In darkness, though, it was tough.
Just before Winfly, Cleary would take a team to Cape Royds, partly to get them into condition for the pulling season, but also to check out the sea ice conditions, which were sometimes treacherous.
“You can always pull a wet dog out, shake him a bit, and make him run around a while,” Cleary said.
Handling dogs was a challenge for Cleary, who had some experience with farm dogs in New Zealand, but considered his work on-the-job training.
After three years, he said, “I could consider myself a mildly competent dog handler,” but gave more credit to the dogs than to himself.
The dogs, he said, were very much individuals and had to be understood. Notes from previous years’ handlers were helpful, but experience was the real key.
It was a chance Robert Scott never gave himself. Dog handling, Cleary said, is a hard thing to learn.
Scott was versatile and tried dogs, ponies and motor vehicles. But he had particular problem with the dogs.
“They’re not pets and never were,” Cleary said. That was likely part of Scott’s problem. Scott was unable to think of the dogs as workers. Instead, he thought of them as companions on the journey.
“If he’d put as much effort into maintaining his dogs as he spent maintaining the ponies, he would have had a lot more success with the dogs,” Cleary said.
Cleary had a good measure of success, traveling up to 1,300 miles in a single season, over to White Island, up the Blue Glacier, and to Cape MacKay. But he stresses that those trips were low-key compared to sledging seasons in the heyday of dog teams, which saw multiple journeys of over 2,300 miles throughout the summer.
They always wanted to work, which often made for a bit of an exciting start to a trip.
“In the morning there’s always this insane first half mile,” Cleary said. But mostly they were
slower than vehicles, which wasn’t all bad. “Sometimes you need to slow down around here,” he said.
The dogs also pulled pranks, Cleary said. “Their favorite thing was to cock their leg on people’s legs and piss in people’s mukluks.”
But the dogs became a political issue. During the summer, they ate the food waste from McMurdo and Scott Base. But during the winter they ate seal. The meat was good for its high
fat content, but killing seals became unpopular.
In 1984 at a meeting in Madrid, the countries with Antarctic programs decided to phase out the use of dogs.
In 1986 New Zealand’s dogs left Scott Base for good. “I think at the time we didn’t really realize it was the end of an era,” Cleary said. “The whole business of their removal wasn’t just with the Scott Base dogs.”
The British, who had used their dogs very intensively through the early 1970s, didn’t take their dogs out until 1993.
When they left, Cleary said, “it was a sad day but it had a degree of inevitability. I regret they’re not here.”
He still misses one of his favorite times with the dogs, “listening to them in full throat on a moonlit night.”
Heating with waste, wasting less heat
Published in the Antarctic Sun
Facilities engineers are building two kinds of energy-saving networks around McMurdo Station. One network, of pipes, permits them to heat buildings at little cost. The other network, of wires, lets them centralize monitoring and control of heating systems in buildings around town.
Until recently, the power plant’s engines were cooled by giant radiators sitting behind the plant. The energy, called “waste heat,” escaped into the air. Last week, that changed.
Rather than transferring excess energy to the outside atmosphere, waste heat is now warming three McMurdo buildings. Facilities engineer Jim McAdam puts it another way: “We’ll do all the cooling of the engines with the town,” he said.
This is not the first time waste heat from the power-generation process will have been put to good use around McMurdo. When flash evaporators were used to purify seawater into drinking
water, excess heat from the power plant was part of that process. As well, the water plant has been heated with waste heat since Winfly 1998.
The new system came online in Crary and buildings 155 and 165 on Monday night. Eventually, the project will include the science cargo building, the firehouse, the hospital and the dorms.
“It went real well,” McAdam said of the changeover to waste heat.
It works like this: The water cooling the power plant’s engines will radiate heat to a loop containing a 60-percent glycol, 40-percent water solution. That solution will be pumped to buildings heated with the waste-heat system.
The buildings’ existing heating will remain in place as backup, and will automatically kick in if the primary system has problems. There is also a large boiler at the beginning of the waste-heat
loop that can substitute the engines’ waste-heat supply.
With waste heat as the main heat source for major buildings around town, boiler emissions will drop by 25 percent and over 450,000 gallons of fuel will be saved each year.
“It’s a win-win deal,” McAdam said.
The use of waste heat effectively doubles the efficiency of the engines. At present, only 31 percent of the energy put into the machines as fuel emerges as electricity.
The remaining 69 percent is emitted in exhaust and radiation from the engine itself (39 percent), and the heat removed by internal engine coolant (30 percent). It is the energy removed by internal coolant that will now be used to heat buildings.
The plan is also to replace the existing power plant with newer, more efficient generators. At that point, heat will also be collected from the machines’ exhaust and added to the waste-heat
loop.
The layout of McMurdo is ideal for this type of project, McAdam said, because the power is generated close to the community it serves. Thus, it is relatively easy to move the heat around
town.
The added efficiency of the waste-heat project is enhanced by other heating-system work going on around station.
As the engineers install waste-heat equipment in buildings, they are also checking for sources of potential heat loss.
Changes to Crary’s heat flow have cut the building’s heating requirements by half.
“We’re identifying key heat-wasting points,” McAdam said.
Another part of the project, which is also being piloted in Crary, is a remote system by which technicians in the power plant can monitor heating equipment around the station from a computer terminal.
Instead of having to go to each building to check equipment and temperatures, automated sensors throughout the new heating system will make those checks continuously.
One benefit of the new monitoring system will be a better understanding of how heating problems happen.
Rather than solving individual problems called in by building occupants, a technician will be able to look at a whole building at once to see where the real problem is. For example, if a building
is too hot because it’s not venting air properly, a repair can be made to the vent rather than to the heat supply.
The monitoring system also increases the efficiency of the waste-heat supply system. Along with variable-speed pumps, electronic monitoring permits fast response to changes in demands for heat around town.
“You just pump exactly what you need,” McAdam said. “It’s a little bit of new technology down here, but anywhere else it’s not.”
The project is ahead of schedule. Crary was the only building planned to come online this year, but buildings 155 and 165 are also being added now, rather than next year.
“We’ll have the whole project paid for before we finish,” McAdam said. It’s a seven-year plan that will pay for itself in less than three years.
“We can put in as much energy as we need and stop wasting so much of it,” McAdam said. McAdam is very proud of the team working with him on all the changes to the heating system around McMurdo.
“Those guys have put a lot of heart into this,” McAdam said of the workers who spent the winter on the project.
The bottom line, he said, is most important for the entire team. “When I leave we’ll be using less energy than when I arrived.”
Facilities engineers are building two kinds of energy-saving networks around McMurdo Station. One network, of pipes, permits them to heat buildings at little cost. The other network, of wires, lets them centralize monitoring and control of heating systems in buildings around town.
Until recently, the power plant’s engines were cooled by giant radiators sitting behind the plant. The energy, called “waste heat,” escaped into the air. Last week, that changed.
Rather than transferring excess energy to the outside atmosphere, waste heat is now warming three McMurdo buildings. Facilities engineer Jim McAdam puts it another way: “We’ll do all the cooling of the engines with the town,” he said.
This is not the first time waste heat from the power-generation process will have been put to good use around McMurdo. When flash evaporators were used to purify seawater into drinking
water, excess heat from the power plant was part of that process. As well, the water plant has been heated with waste heat since Winfly 1998.
The new system came online in Crary and buildings 155 and 165 on Monday night. Eventually, the project will include the science cargo building, the firehouse, the hospital and the dorms.
“It went real well,” McAdam said of the changeover to waste heat.
It works like this: The water cooling the power plant’s engines will radiate heat to a loop containing a 60-percent glycol, 40-percent water solution. That solution will be pumped to buildings heated with the waste-heat system.
The buildings’ existing heating will remain in place as backup, and will automatically kick in if the primary system has problems. There is also a large boiler at the beginning of the waste-heat
loop that can substitute the engines’ waste-heat supply.
With waste heat as the main heat source for major buildings around town, boiler emissions will drop by 25 percent and over 450,000 gallons of fuel will be saved each year.
“It’s a win-win deal,” McAdam said.
The use of waste heat effectively doubles the efficiency of the engines. At present, only 31 percent of the energy put into the machines as fuel emerges as electricity.
The remaining 69 percent is emitted in exhaust and radiation from the engine itself (39 percent), and the heat removed by internal engine coolant (30 percent). It is the energy removed by internal coolant that will now be used to heat buildings.
The plan is also to replace the existing power plant with newer, more efficient generators. At that point, heat will also be collected from the machines’ exhaust and added to the waste-heat
loop.
The layout of McMurdo is ideal for this type of project, McAdam said, because the power is generated close to the community it serves. Thus, it is relatively easy to move the heat around
town.
The added efficiency of the waste-heat project is enhanced by other heating-system work going on around station.
As the engineers install waste-heat equipment in buildings, they are also checking for sources of potential heat loss.
Changes to Crary’s heat flow have cut the building’s heating requirements by half.
“We’re identifying key heat-wasting points,” McAdam said.
Another part of the project, which is also being piloted in Crary, is a remote system by which technicians in the power plant can monitor heating equipment around the station from a computer terminal.
Instead of having to go to each building to check equipment and temperatures, automated sensors throughout the new heating system will make those checks continuously.
One benefit of the new monitoring system will be a better understanding of how heating problems happen.
Rather than solving individual problems called in by building occupants, a technician will be able to look at a whole building at once to see where the real problem is. For example, if a building
is too hot because it’s not venting air properly, a repair can be made to the vent rather than to the heat supply.
The monitoring system also increases the efficiency of the waste-heat supply system. Along with variable-speed pumps, electronic monitoring permits fast response to changes in demands for heat around town.
“You just pump exactly what you need,” McAdam said. “It’s a little bit of new technology down here, but anywhere else it’s not.”
The project is ahead of schedule. Crary was the only building planned to come online this year, but buildings 155 and 165 are also being added now, rather than next year.
“We’ll have the whole project paid for before we finish,” McAdam said. It’s a seven-year plan that will pay for itself in less than three years.
“We can put in as much energy as we need and stop wasting so much of it,” McAdam said. McAdam is very proud of the team working with him on all the changes to the heating system around McMurdo.
“Those guys have put a lot of heart into this,” McAdam said of the workers who spent the winter on the project.
The bottom line, he said, is most important for the entire team. “When I leave we’ll be using less energy than when I arrived.”
High-flying science
Published in the Antarctic Sun
In the next few days, a giant floating bubble will appear over Williams Field and climb high into the heavens. It will circle Antarctica for about two weeks, and return to Earth nearby.
The bubble is a helium-filled balloon 100 feet tall. It will carry a scientific payload almost 24 miles into the sky, from which altitude it will still be visible to the unaided eye.
The Flare Genesis Experiment, as the project is called, is looking at the origin of solar flares to determine what causes them. What is known at present is that flares emerge from sunspots in which the magnetic field changes, becomes unstable and erupts in a flare.
“We want to know how flares are born,” said David Rust of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the lead scientist on the project.
Using the 32-inch solar telescope, the second-largest in the world, Rust and his team can look at sunspots very closely.
By measuring the polarization and shifting wavelength of the light emitted from a specific sunspot, Rust and his team can calculate the magnetic field acting on the area.
He and others have spent 25 years trying to put together a space mission to do this work. It would cost $800 million, though it would yield years of observing opportunities from a space vehicle.
The balloon launch, on the other hand, costs $16 million for about two weeks of observing the sun. The last time the telescope went aloft, in 1997, it stayed up for 18 days.
The scientists are supported by the NASA-funded National Scientific Balloon Facility, based in Palestine, Texas. The facility takes care of elements of the project apart from the telescope and its housing.
“We provide the vehicle, we provide the telemetry system,” said Steven Peterzen, the NSBF’s on-site coordinator. The facility’s staff also rigs the balloon, performs the launch, monitors the flight, and pops the balloon to end the flight. But even then, the job isn’t done. The payload’s valuable instrumentation must be recovered.
“We do this all over the world,” Peterzen said. Antarctica is a good place to send up balloons because of the emptiness of the space, but more importantly because of the regular wind pattern
which stabilizes over the continent in midsummer. The balloon, when launched from Williams Field, will circle the continent and most likely return nearby, to be brought down on the Ross Ice Shelf for easy recovery.
During the first 20 hours of the balloon’s flight, the scientists can communicate extensively with the payload because it is within line-of-sight. They run tests to be sure everything is working
properly, and collect some early data. All data is stored on board for the duration of the flight.
After those first hours, though, the balloon and its payload are only reachable for a few minutes every couple of hours. If something goes wrong, the scientists can load all of their equipment into
the back of an LC-130 and fly closer to the payload, to regain line-of-sight communications.
The NSBF team at Williams Field has enough equipment to have the two balloons in the air at once, though that has never happened before in Antarctica.
They can only have one at a time in line-of-sight, though, meaning a second launch can follow the first only after a day or two.
Later this season a similar launch will lift a project run by a research team led by scientists at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Washington, who didn’t even expect
to launch their project in Antarctica this season.
They had hoped to launch in Alaska last June, but were unable to. Then, in August, they got a phone call: Another group wasn’t ready to come to Antarctica.
They scrambled to make the trip, helped by the fact that they’d never really unpacked in June.
“It was all still in boxes,” said Robyn Millan, a graduate student at UC Berkeley’s Space
Sciences Laboratory.
The instruments will show them more about aurora, the ghostly lights in the sky at high latitudes. Aurora are caused by electrons from space entering the Earth’s atmosphere. They release energy in the electrically-charged areas of the upper atmosphere, emitting visible light and X-rays.
The balloon’s altitude allows X-rays to be observed before they are absorbed by the atmosphere. The balloon also allows a relatively heavy payload to be launched, as compared with satellites, where weight is at a premium.
Further, while a satellite moves very quickly through a large range of areas, a balloon stays relatively stationary.
This permits the researchers to determine whether what they observe is related to the location of its observation or the time of the event.
Millan emphasized the academic value of a balloon-based project, which has a slower timetable than a satellite mission. The extra time lets students take a more active role in the work. They build the equipment, receive the results and analyze the data within the time frame of an advanced degree program.
Also on the X-ray payload is what is called a “piggyback” experiment, using space and weight within the allowed limits but unused by the primary research.
NASA is testing shielding materials for space vehicles. Some payloads have been “fried” by the solar energy, which can be absorbed into the payload vehicle and cause overheating of components.
In the next few days, a giant floating bubble will appear over Williams Field and climb high into the heavens. It will circle Antarctica for about two weeks, and return to Earth nearby.
The bubble is a helium-filled balloon 100 feet tall. It will carry a scientific payload almost 24 miles into the sky, from which altitude it will still be visible to the unaided eye.
The Flare Genesis Experiment, as the project is called, is looking at the origin of solar flares to determine what causes them. What is known at present is that flares emerge from sunspots in which the magnetic field changes, becomes unstable and erupts in a flare.
“We want to know how flares are born,” said David Rust of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the lead scientist on the project.
Using the 32-inch solar telescope, the second-largest in the world, Rust and his team can look at sunspots very closely.
By measuring the polarization and shifting wavelength of the light emitted from a specific sunspot, Rust and his team can calculate the magnetic field acting on the area.
He and others have spent 25 years trying to put together a space mission to do this work. It would cost $800 million, though it would yield years of observing opportunities from a space vehicle.
The balloon launch, on the other hand, costs $16 million for about two weeks of observing the sun. The last time the telescope went aloft, in 1997, it stayed up for 18 days.
The scientists are supported by the NASA-funded National Scientific Balloon Facility, based in Palestine, Texas. The facility takes care of elements of the project apart from the telescope and its housing.
“We provide the vehicle, we provide the telemetry system,” said Steven Peterzen, the NSBF’s on-site coordinator. The facility’s staff also rigs the balloon, performs the launch, monitors the flight, and pops the balloon to end the flight. But even then, the job isn’t done. The payload’s valuable instrumentation must be recovered.
“We do this all over the world,” Peterzen said. Antarctica is a good place to send up balloons because of the emptiness of the space, but more importantly because of the regular wind pattern
which stabilizes over the continent in midsummer. The balloon, when launched from Williams Field, will circle the continent and most likely return nearby, to be brought down on the Ross Ice Shelf for easy recovery.
During the first 20 hours of the balloon’s flight, the scientists can communicate extensively with the payload because it is within line-of-sight. They run tests to be sure everything is working
properly, and collect some early data. All data is stored on board for the duration of the flight.
After those first hours, though, the balloon and its payload are only reachable for a few minutes every couple of hours. If something goes wrong, the scientists can load all of their equipment into
the back of an LC-130 and fly closer to the payload, to regain line-of-sight communications.
The NSBF team at Williams Field has enough equipment to have the two balloons in the air at once, though that has never happened before in Antarctica.
They can only have one at a time in line-of-sight, though, meaning a second launch can follow the first only after a day or two.
Later this season a similar launch will lift a project run by a research team led by scientists at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Washington, who didn’t even expect
to launch their project in Antarctica this season.
They had hoped to launch in Alaska last June, but were unable to. Then, in August, they got a phone call: Another group wasn’t ready to come to Antarctica.
They scrambled to make the trip, helped by the fact that they’d never really unpacked in June.
“It was all still in boxes,” said Robyn Millan, a graduate student at UC Berkeley’s Space
Sciences Laboratory.
The instruments will show them more about aurora, the ghostly lights in the sky at high latitudes. Aurora are caused by electrons from space entering the Earth’s atmosphere. They release energy in the electrically-charged areas of the upper atmosphere, emitting visible light and X-rays.
The balloon’s altitude allows X-rays to be observed before they are absorbed by the atmosphere. The balloon also allows a relatively heavy payload to be launched, as compared with satellites, where weight is at a premium.
Further, while a satellite moves very quickly through a large range of areas, a balloon stays relatively stationary.
This permits the researchers to determine whether what they observe is related to the location of its observation or the time of the event.
Millan emphasized the academic value of a balloon-based project, which has a slower timetable than a satellite mission. The extra time lets students take a more active role in the work. They build the equipment, receive the results and analyze the data within the time frame of an advanced degree program.
Also on the X-ray payload is what is called a “piggyback” experiment, using space and weight within the allowed limits but unused by the primary research.
NASA is testing shielding materials for space vehicles. Some payloads have been “fried” by the solar energy, which can be absorbed into the payload vehicle and cause overheating of components.
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