After a fog delay in McMurdo, Joulien was able to depart on 12/28 and travel through Christchurch and Auckland to arrive at LAX at 6am December 31st. I met him there and we relaxed over breakfast at Panera after delivering his checked luggage equipment to our lab at UCI. Our adventure shifts now to remote control of the 2 stations left on the ice shelf, and further development for the ARIANNA project.
Thinking back over the month-and-a-half trip, and our scientific accomplishments:
1) We recovered the old station and the data it had accumulated after loosing contact last year. It turns out that all it needed was power; so given that and a little re-engineering we left it operating again for 2012.
2) The wireless link over the 1km stretch to the second station was found to be excellent. The 0.8/0.3 Mbps download/upload speeds are comparable to inexpensive home cable internet access and quite fast given the conditions.
3) Sending radio waves through the ice shelf, bouncing them off the ocean below, and receiving them back on the surface this year seems to confirm the small power loss observed previously. A neutrino hitting the ice would produce a similar radio pulse and then be detected.
4) The new (second) station is set-up and operating with electronics developed over the past year.
5) A stand-alone wind sensor was setup to record wind speed over the entire year...well past the point when our stations are expected to loose power due to the 24-hour darkness that persists through the austral wintertime. No one really knows what the wind speeds are in the winter, so this will help us design future stations and wind generators.
Personally, this was an adventure of a lifetime. So few persons travel onto Antarctica, and yet some have many times. Our PI, Professor Steve Barwick has been doing this for something like 20 years, and I heard of persons in McMurdo who spend the southern Summers in Antarctica and the northern Summers in the Arctic -- basically always living in snow and cold.
In preparation for the trip I grew a beard, matching Jordan and Joulien in our natural defense against icy wind and sunburn. Oddly, we noticed that part of our beards had become blond. I guess it's one of those mysteries...
Thanks for joining me on this adventure!
(PS: For more stories about McMurdo, I recommend a visit to Michelle Brown's blog. We met her in snowcamp while she was visiting everything in McMurdo. She teaches 8th grade in Austin TX: http://www.polartrec.com/member/michelle-brown)
