One Week in: December 14-16, 2012

A little over 7 days in, Super-TIGER is on the other side of Antarctica from McMurdo. We've been keeping track of it around the clock, with our McMurdo shift remaining in the evening. The last couple of nights have been relatively uneventful--mostly just dealing with changing satellite links as we move in and out of view.

Friday I climbed Observation Hill again and there was a slightly better view, but nothing too exciting. EBEX and BLAST both passed their hang tests and could be launching soon.

We're also almost to the point where we start losing people--this next week, Richard leaves McMurdo on Tuesday, followed by Bob on Wednesday, Kenichi on Thursday and Makoto on Friday. That will leave just JohnE and I left until early January, when Thomas and Sean return.

Another Day of Monitoring and Other LDB Experiment Blogs: December 12, 2012

Thursday wasn't a particularly exciting day. I went in to work a bit earlier than Wednesday to deal with a few emails and then stayed for our monitoring shift. Most of that was spent troubleshooting one issue, followed by a long conference call at the end of the shift to try to figure out another. Nothing particularly exciting--just fine-tuning the instrument and making sure the data is all coming down ok.

Sometime Thursday we went within 140 miles of Vostok Station, the Russian station that holds the record for coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth. We're around a quarter of the way around, and so far our flight path looks good.

The two other experiments out at LDB have a web presence as well. Steve from BLAST is blogging at http://galadriel.astro.utoronto.ca/ballast/?cat=15 and Asad from EBEX at http://ebexinflight.blogspot.com .

If you want to see their Super-TIGER Launch entries/Photos, they're at http://galadriel.astro.utoronto.ca/ballast/?p=6043/ for Steve's and https://picasaweb.google.com/104253244018605213307/EBEXInAntarctica20121209 for Asad's.

Dana's Last Day and a Hike Up Observation Hill: December 12, 2012

With Super-TIGER launched and flying, the team down on the ice is going to start slowly leaving one by one, until about a little over a week from now when it will only be JohnE and myself. Wednesday marked Dana's last day on the continent,  and, having been here four times before this trip, he was happy to get to go back home.

Since our shift went to 2am and we ended up on a conference call that didn't end until closer to 2:40, I managed to sleep through the magical 12:12:12 on 12/12/12 time. After having lunch (about 15 minutes after I woke up), I went back to my room and eventually decided to take a hike up Observation Hill.

Observation Hill towers over McMurdo and, I'm assured, provides great views of the surrounding area.  During Robert F. Scott's Discovery expedition of 1902-04, the hill was used as an observation point, hence the name. Wednesday was a little overcast when I started climbing, but by the time I was halfway up the summit was covered in clouds. I kept going hoping that it would clear up, but when I got to the top views were very restricted.  It was a pretty reasonable hike--I went slow on the way up and still made it to the top in about 40 minutes.

At the top is a wooden cross that was put up in 1913 to honor the members of Scott's party that died on the return trip from the South Pole in March 1912.

On the way down, I got a really nice view of all of McMurdo:

I took a longer but less steep way back down the mountain for the bottom half. This road took me by the fuel station, and I saw people at work on a new fuel storage tank that's currently being built.

Back in town, we worked our typical 7pm-2am monitoring shift in Crary Lab. While Super-TIGER stayed pretty close to McMurdo during the first day or two of flight, we've definitely started into out "orbit" around Antarctica.

Monitoring Begins: December 10 and 11, 2012

After we finished the first night of monitoring, we rode Ivan the Terra Bus back into town. I then spent most of Monday morning and early afternoon asleep, catching up from the lack of sleep surrounding launch day.

After dinner on Monday, we got a walk-around tour of Crary Lab. This tour is required of anyone that has 24-hour access to the building, and since we will be monitoring from there every night, that includes us. Basically, it went over safety procedures and everything that needs to be done in the event of an emergency.

Then, we went down to our monitoring office for the first time. It's nothing too exciting--an office that can fit 4 or 5 people with desks along the walls and a few chairs. At 7pm, the McMurdo monitoring shift started. Kenichi stayed with us for a little bit, but since he had relieved us at Willy Field in the morning he left shortly after monitoring started. Richard also left early, planning to head out to Willy Field Tuesday morning, so Bob, JohnE, and I completed the rest of the monitoring shift. We're nominally done at 2am McMurdo time, but Monday night/Tuesday morning we had a "quick" conference call with our Goddard collaborators that meant that we didn't leave until around 2:30am, by which point it was time for bed.

Tuesday was much the same--I slept in, had lunch, and then relaxed in the afternoon before dinner and going on shift at 7pm. When we're monitoring, we go through a series of graphs and other charts on a website Kenichi developed that give us information about how the instrument is working. If needed, we can make adjustments and send commands to the instrument, but we try to avoid that whenever possible. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning we had another after-shift conference call with our collaborators in the US and then I got to bed around 3am.

So far, though, our flight path looks great!

Launch Day: December 9, 2012

My alarm went off at 1:30am the morning of Sunday, December 9. I stumbled around the room and got ready in the dark, making sure to pack an extra change of clothes with my ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear and the tripod I had checked out from McMurdo Gear Issue the night before. Then it was off to our usual meeting place to catch a Delta out to Willy Field.

Two Deltas were waiting, so I got into the first one I got to. Apparently, everybody else made the opposite choice, so I sat alone in that Delta for about 10 minutes before hopping in the other one and riding out to LDB.

It was weird riding out at 2am--the Sun was up, but it was casting long shadows that you don't normally see during the Antarctic summer daytime. By the time we got to Willy Field, BLAST was already out on the deck to the payload building (the BLAST team had the foresight to get into a van that was driving out from McMurdo). BLAST then got picked up by the CSBF Launch Vehicle, The Boss and driven out to the "dance floor", where the could be secured down while Super-TIGER was being driven around by The Boss (and, sneakily, appear in the foreground of any launch photos).

Richard ran through his pre-flight checklist inside while Dana got Super-TIGER hooked up to the crane of the payload building. Once that was done, we moved out to the deck and set down to be picked up by The Boss. Since the Hang Test, the straps on The Boss were modified so that we could be picked up and set on jack stands right on the deck, instead of on the ice in front of it. We then deployed the solar panels and the CSBF folks installed the ballast and secured the line-of-sight antennas.

We then sat out on The Boss while Richard ran through a quick version of his checklist and Drew ran through a series of tests on the commanding and data links. Once both of these were completed successfully  it was time to roll out to the launch pad.

Dana, JohnE, and I went out to watch the parade of vehicles on their way out to the launch pad. First came The Boss, with Super-TIGER hanging from it. After that went a pickup truck with CSBF personell, followed by a cart with the parachute system. Then, two tractors pulled trailers full of helium out to the pad.

While CSBF folks were setting up, we ran through Richard's short checklist again to make sure that everything was functioning on the flight line. Because the prevailing winds were coming from the south, the flight line was arranged so that the instrument would be launched with the wind, towards Mount Erebus. This meant that we would be unable to re-create the iconic panoramic photograph from TIGER showing an inflating balloon and Mount Erebus, but Dana got a panorama showing Observation Hill in the background and I tried to take some from our observation area.

Around 8am, I attempted to walk out closer to the launch pad to try to take some more photos. At first, it looked like The Boss was almost in fog, and by the time I got out to where BLAST was secured (no more than 3-400 feet away from the payload building) I could no longer see The Boss, or, turning around, the payload building.

While I was concerned that this fog would affect our launch chances, CSBF assured us that since it was very clear when looking straight up, the fog shouldn't delay us. Soon after, inflation started, and we got to see a slowly inflating balloon as the fog melted away.

By the time inflation started, we had attracted a crowd of EBEX and BLAST people outside behind the payload buildings in the designated spectator area. We all watched as the CSBF folks slowly filled the balloon with helium.

Eventually, inflation was finished. CSBF then got their folks out of the way and got ready to release the balloon.

When the balloon released, it slowly drifted up until it was directly above The Boss. Then, The Boss drove forward for a little bit, released the balloon and went in reverse. Super-TIGER then began slowly drifting towards the sky to scattered applause (those with cameras were still furiously taking photographs).

As the balloon slowly floated up, members of EBEX and BLAST congratulated our team. We stopped to admire the balloon as it drifted up, and then went inside to get to work.

With the launch over, our work was just beginning. We went inside and verified things were working and kept track of the instrument as it climbed up, noting the altitude, pressure, and lowest temperature every few minutes. The temperatures were especially interesting, since the sensors inside our thermal insulation cooled off slowly, while the solar panels were hot while they were under the sun on the ground, got very cold as we went through the troposphere, and then got very hot (up to almost 95C!) after being exposed to direct sunlight.

Just after lunch, we reached 85,000 ft, where we turned on the High Voltage system. The HV system was a bit of a concern, as maintaining high voltages at high altitudes is tricky, and has the potential to end badly. So far, nothing has failed, which we're obviously very happy about.

Once the HV was on, we got to work basically re-doing a lot of the calibration work we'd been working on the last couple of weeks. We adjusted some of the coincidence thresholds so that our event rate was as expected and we weren't getting events we didn't care about. We changed some high voltages to make sure that everything was matched.

While Dana caught a ride into town in the early afternoon, the rest of us continued monitoring the instrument and making sure everything was calibrated correctly. Makoto and Kenichi stayed until 11pm, then headed back to town to get some sleep in order to be rested to take over Monday morning. Bob, JohnE, Richard, and I spent the night out at Willy Field, alternating between trying to take naps and monitoring the instrument. I'll have more up about the monitoring, etc. later, but for now it's time to sleep.

The balloon can be tracked here: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/map/balloon0/balloon0.htm

Video of the launch and a timelapse I took are available on the Super-TIGER facebook page, facebook.com/thesupertiger

Launch Operations Underway!

We're outside on the launch vehicle, solar panels are deployed, ballast is added, and CSBF has the parachute system over by the vehicle ready to install. So far, so good on our launch attempt.

Follow along at: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm

Twitter updates at @supertigerldb

Facebook updates at facebook.com/supertigerldb

FINAL Preparations and Time Lapses: November 8, 2012

Saturday morning, Richard ran through his pre-flight checklist in record time and made sure everything was still functioning as it was the day before. The usual 11am weather briefing got postponed until after lunch (Lobster Tail and Steak. It's a harsh continent.), but it was the same plan as the last two days: leave McMurdo at 2am, with an eye towards launching around 10am. Just like the past two days, there was a second meeting at the end of the day to either confirm these plans or call them off.

Unlike the last two days, this second meeting ended in a confirmation of our plans to "Show" in the morning. Two Deltas will leave McMurdo at 2am local time (7am Saturday in St. Louis, 8am on the East Coast) and head out to Willy Field. BLAST will then get moved out to the "dance floor" for more testing and we'll proceed with launch operations.

I'm posting this early so that I can get some sleep, but launch operations should be viewable via webcam, and, eventually, streaming video at: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm

We will also be updating our Facebook (facebook.com/thesupertiger) and Twitter (@supertigerldb) feeds throughout the proceedings.


I took a time-lapse of the view out the window of Ivan the Terra Bus Saturday morning on the way out to LDB:

This video starts out in front of Building 155, home to the McMurdo cafeteria. Then we drive out of town, first past the Hospital and Fire Station, and then past a variety of other buildings. We then drive over the hill to Scott Base, stop briefly by the transition on to the ice shelf, and proceed out to LDB.

I also took a time lapse outside this afternoon, mostly in an attempt to make sure I could keep my camera warm with a hand warmer and a mitten and it would take video and not freeze. This will hopefully be useful on launch day. 

In this video you can see clouds moving over Mount Erebus and EBEX doing some calibration tests on the deck to their payload building. The cherry picker crane is part of the EBEX test. 

Hopefully things will work out tomorrow. Now, it's time to get some sleep while I can.