BLAST on Ice!

Well, here we go again. After flying the telescope around the North Pole, it seemed like the next best thing to do would be to fly it around the South Pole, so we're heading that way to get it done. This flight probably won't land as close to Toronto as the last one, but we'll see...

For those of you who'd like a bit more background, I'm a graduate student working on the BLAST experiment, a telescope which flies on a stratospheric balloon at altitudes of about 37 km (120,000 feet). We're here in Antarctica because it provides certain advantages for us, namely:

• The sun is always at approximately the same height, so the balloon doesn't heat up and cool down over the course of a day, which would make us go up and down in altitude every day.
• The sun is always up (now that it's summer), so we can use solar arrays to power the telescope in flight
• There's a polar vortex in the stratosphere which will take the balloon, once we launch it, in a circular path around the continent. In theory, after two weeks or so, it should be back here and we can pick it up again.

So sit back and watch us prepare, if you'd like. We'll be launching the telescope sometime between 15 December and 15 January (depending on weather) so if you keep an eye on this page, you should be able to catch the launch.

Note: clicking on the images in the posts below will take you to the picture gallery for that entry. Clicking on an image in the gallery will take you to a full size version of that image. You're welcome to email me, if you have questions (my email address is at the bottom of the page), but I can't guarantee that I'll have time to answer everything, so apologies in advance. Veteran watchers of this journal will notice that I've switched the order of the posts, so the oldest one comes first. If you want the old way, you can change it with the "newest first" link below. If you live in a backwards part of the world which doesn't use the metric system, the weather conditions can be displayed in Imperial Units, by clicking on the [I] in the box to the right; click the [M] to go back to metric units. And don't forget to check out the panoramas page from time to time. Panoramas are usually added a day or two later, when I get the time to stitch them together.

Fri 2006-10-27 00:35:03 UTC

It's currently Thursday afternoon. I'm at Caltech in Pasadena. Since I was passing through the area, Barth managed to get me an opportunity to give a talk to our friends here in the Observational Cosmology lab. They're hoping to use some of the BLAST technology in upcoming work they're doing. This evening I fly out to New Zealand, along with Enzo, Mark, Marco and Marie, the "Second Wave."

The "First Wave", Gaelen, Chris, Nick and Matt already made New Zealand and may be flying down to the Ice already, where they'll set everything up in advance of us. If you're interested in their exploits, why not check out Gaelen's phlog.

Sat 2006-10-28 05:35:41 UTC

It's Saturday afternoon. Enzo, Marco, Mark, Marie and I are in Christchurch, at various different B&Bs due to overcrowding. Pole hasn't opened up yet, due to cold weather there, so all the people who were headed that way are stuck in McMurdo. As a result, McMurdo's full, so we're stuck in Christchurch. We're expected to head down on Tuesday.

We left Los Angeles a little late, due to some congestion on the taxiways. I had a window seat, but since the Pacific Ocean is near the most boring thing to watch yourself fly over, it didn't matter much. Enroute I was cheated out of having a Friday, so I hope for everyone else it went well.

We arrived in Aukland about 6:30 Saturday morning, a bit late, having been unable to make up the time in flight. Unloading a 747, naturally, takes some time, and the line at passport control was also long, so I didn't get through it until about 7:30. After that it was collect the baggage and head over to customs, where I had to wait half an hour for a single stamp on a form. And I mean just wait... in the area where other people's worldly belongings were being vigorously reduced to their constituent elements to check for what-have-you.

By the time I got out of customs, the flight to Christchurch was already boarding. Taking the advice of the "first wave", I wheeled my luggage out the front door of the international terminal and embarked on the Walking Tour of Auckland Airport, which was posted to take twelve minutes, and ended at the domestic terminal. Through a clever combination of weaving, dubious short-cuts and, of course, ramming people ahead of me off the path with my luggage cart, I managed to make it to the terminal before the plane took off. I hadn't needed to worry: Mark was there, and would have been able to prevent the plane from taking off by main force, if necessary. Check-in at the domestic terminal was untypical for an aiport: it mostly involved sauntering around a bit until I happened across a check in agent. I made the luggage hand-off, abandoned my luggage cart idling in the middle of a terminal thoroughfare and made a bee-line for the gate. Even the security screening people seemed to be more interested in getting me on the flight, as opposed to figuring out what sort of stuff I might have in that interesting looking cardboard box.

Once on the 737 bound for Christchurch, I discovered that I had been assigned a seat in business class, along with another guy bound for the Ice. Upon landing in Christchurch it appeared that a large portion of the flight's passengers were doing the same thing as us: heading for Antarctica, because a lot of us ended up in another area at the Christchurch Airport, where we had the "meet-and-greet" with some people from Raytheon Polar Services (RPS). Here we learned about the overcrowding at McMurdo. After briefing us, we got our luggage, got our hotel assignment, and then were shuttled to our hotels. As it turned out, Enzo and I are staying in B&Bs right next to each other, and Marie and Mark and in the a third B&B a few doors down, the other side of the street, and close to Cathedral Square and the Arts Centre. Unfortunately, Marco wasn't so lucky, and is staying some ways away.

After a few hours of post-travel recuperation, we got together (sans Marco) for lunch, and a bit of a walk around. Enzo took off to do some grocery shopping while Mark, Marie and I tooled around the Arts Centre for a while. Marie and I then walked around the botanic gardens for a bit, while Mark went off on his own. We're now all back at our respective lodgings (for another round of post-travel recuperation) and we'll all meet for dinner (hopefully with Marco) later.

Sun 2006-10-29 04:13:02 UTC

It's Sunday afternoon. After a welcome night's sleep, we met at ten at the Art Gallery to decide what to do. After wandering around the galleries for a while, Mark, Marie, Enzo and I decided to head out to the gondola, and a bit of hiking afterwards. Marco decided to stay in town and explore more of the Art Gallery. We took the bus out to the Gondola, south of the city. We took the gondola up to the top of the Port Hills, where we had a great view of Christchurch to the north and Lyttelton, the harbour, and the Banks Peninsula beyond it, to the south. From the summit, we hiked down the other side to Lyttelton, where we had some lunch.

After lunch Enzo headed back into town while the three of us took the ferry across the harbour to the small village of Diamond Harbour, where we drank some beer before heading back, just in time to get rained on heavily.

Mon 2006-10-30 03:28:53 UTC

It's Monday afternoon. We've just returned from the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) at the Antarctic Center at the airport. At the CDC we got all our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, tried it on to make sure it fit and also got our laptops screened for use at McMurdo. This took several hours. We still don't know if we'll be leaving tomorrow morning, since the USAP hasn't figured out who (if anyone) is going down tomorrow. It sounds like there's more than one plane load of passengers queued up here in Christchurch. It all depends on whether South Pole will open today or not. We'll know later this evening if we should expect to ship out in the morning.

Tue 2006-10-31 00:03:18 UTC

It's Tuesday afternoon, we're currently sitting on a C-17 transport, four hours out from Christchurch enroute to McMurdo. Another hour or so to go. I woke just before five, packed my bags and got ready to meet the shuttle. My host at the B&B even managed to provide me with a full breakfast before the shuttle picked us up at six a.m. to head to the CDC. At the CDC we were informed we had half an hour to get our ECW gear on and re-pack our bags for the flight. Repacking meant putting enough stuff in our single carry-on bag so that if we got partway out and the plane "boomeranged" (that is, aborted and returned to Christchurch) we would have enough stuff to live with in Christchurch until our next attempt. This was because all our checked baggage was crated up like regular cargo and wouldn't be uncrated again unless we were to spend more than three days before the next flight attempt.

After a brief pre-flight briefing, we took the buses over to the C-17 and boarded the plane, making sure to pick up our bag lunch on our way to the plane. The taxi was long, and seemed longer since we had no idea what was happening outside due to lack of windows. However we eventually took off and have had an uneventful, if loud flight so far. Everything looks promising for touchdown in McMurdo in an hour or so.

Tue 2006-10-31 09:03:01 UTC

It's ten Tuesday evening. We've arrived at McMurdo and got settled in. It's time for bed: the bus to the highbay leaves at 7:30 tomorrow morning, plus I got up before five this morning.

Other than getting some impressive views of Antarctica, little happened on the flight since my previous update. One of the things I forgot to do when packing and putting on ECW gear was pack a book into my carry on bag, which worried me because I thought I might get bored on the five hour flight. Fortunately, Marco found a book in the seat pocket in front of him when we boarded the plane, so I read that. Unfortunately it was not a very good book and obviously hadn't been seen by the eyes of any copyeditor. Fortunately it was short enough that I didn't have to take it with me when I left the plane. Instead I left it for the next group of travellers.

We landed at McMurdo around 4:30. The planes come in on the Ice Runway, which is built on the ice sheet just off shore from the station. Later in the season, when the ice gets thin they'll move to Williams Field (where we work) and land planes there. The ice runway is preferred since it's both longer and useable by planes with wheels (like the C-17). Williams Field is only used by ski-equipped Hercules and smaller aircraft.

After disembarking, we were bussed to the Chalet where we had our arrival briefing and got our room keys and other useful information. The dorms we are in are two people per room, with a shared bathroom. I'm sharing a room with Enzo. Around six the guys from the highbay came back for dinner and we met up with Gaelen, Matt, and Nick. Chris was away at Snow School. And now, after a hearty dinner and some relaxing, it's time to say goodnight.

We caught the bus yesterday at 7:30, which meant waking up at 5:30 to have a hearty breakfast at 6:30. We take with us all our ECW gear when we go out to Willy Field, so there's a lot of stuff to lug around. The ride to Willy Field takes about half an hour. On the way we pass Scott Base, the Kiwi base here in Antarctica. It's much smaller: about 90 inhabitants in summer. At Scott Base the road makes the transition from the rock of Ross Island (where McMurdo is) to the snow road on the ice shelf, where Willy Field is.

In the evening, Gaelen, Nick, Matt and I attended a lecture on penguins' diving habits and oxygen consumption in the Crary lab before heading to bed.

In the evening, after dinner we went to the bar and hung out with some of the LDB guys for a while.

In the evening we attended a beach party at Scott Base, the nearby (and much smaller) New Zealand base.

As usual, Ivan picked us up at 5:30, but we had a slow time of it, and picked up a few hitch hikers along the road, so that we didn't get back to base until 6:20. We then had a quick supper, in order to catch the outdoor recreation seminar, which is required if we want to do any moderate to long hikes in the area. The seminar started at seven, and we almost didn't make it, but got there just in time. After the seminar we headed to Galligher's (the bar) for a drink and some foosball.

This morning, Mark, Matt and Marie stayed in town in the morning. They're planning to come out after lunch, in preparation for an all night helium transfer, assuming our helium arrives today.

As planned, Mark, Marie and Matt showed up just after noon. Marie spent some time in the afternoon leak checking the star cameras. The helium showed up in town shortly before we left for the day and, on our way back to town, the helium passed us heading out to Willy Field. Early reports this morning had Mark, et al. leaving Willy around 3 a.m. last night, with the optics box at 15 Kelvin. A successful transfer.

After a brief rest following the hike, we met at the Coffee House, which also has a movie theatre in it, to watch 12 Monkeys, which was playing. Then dinner and a quiet evening to finish off the day. Today looks like it'll be a busy one. We hope to mount the cryostat.

Barth and Mark Halpern arrived today and we met them at dinner. After dinner we headed over to the lounge in Mark's dorm for some foosball and pool.

We headed back for town shortly before five in the evening, making use of a shuttle instead of Ivan (which comes for 5:30) because we were scheduled to take a trip out to Cape Evans to see Robert Scott's 1911 Terra Nova Hut there around 6:30. The trip left on time and we headed out on a delta for Cape Evans, an hour or so away. The road headed northwestwards over the annual sea ice, around the west side of Ross Island, and across Erebus Bay. Cape Evans is almost due west of Mount Erebus. The road was smooth and the delta trip uneventful, although crowded since we were sitting on two benches facing each other in the delta, with our ECW gear piled up between us. We stopped once on the way near the Erebus Glacial Tongue, a glacier etending down the side of Erebus into Erebus Bay, where we could see some seals near the pressure ridges that had developed.

At Cape Evans is Scott's Terra Nova hut, which was larger and extensively used by Scott's 1911-1913 expedition. Everything in the hut is very well preserved: it's a freeze-dried museum, and it looks like it could still be in use. Like Discovery Hut on Hut Point near McMurdo, Terra Nova Hut was prefrabricated, this time in England, before being errected on Ross Island. Unlike Discovery Hut, it was designed for cold weather, and not an Australian outback hut, so it kept things warm instead of cold. Also at Cape Evans was a (modern) fish hut, where scientists had cut a hole in the ice to study local wildlife, which we were also permitted to enter to take a look. We stayed at Cape Evans for a few hours, and took lots of pictures, before heading back to McMurdo, with another stop to admire the scenery, along the way. We got back to town around eleven at night.

Oh, yeah, this funny thing happened yesterday in the early afternoon where I somewhat absentmindedly deliberately erased all the pictures from my camera. So, if you were looking for pictures of us from the morning up until that point, you're out of luck. Fortunately we looked basically the same in the later afternoon, so you'll have to make yourself content with those. I think Antarctica's making me go crazy.

Because the weather is better today than it's been in a while, and better than forecasted for the near future, we're taking the gondola outside to do the 150 meter test.

Today was the second day in a row that we weren't able to come in on Ivan, due to it being in the shop for preventative maintenance. Instead we needed two deltas and a van to get out here, which didn't make Shuttles very happy. I'm hoping to get the secondary actuator system working fully today. Others will spend the day building up the gondola.

Yesterday I spent doing more actuator work, which went slowly. Hopefully I'll finish it today. Others spent time putting on sun shield panels. Enzo, Mark and Marie did more noise tests.

Mark Devlin took the morning off yesterday to do the Turkey Trot run, and placed seventh overall, and first in his category. I spent most of the day at work finishing up the actuator code. Others mounted the chin on the gondola. Saturday McMurdo observed American Thanksgiving, and we got in on the seven o'clock seating for dinner, which involved the standard turkey fare. It was good and we all ate our fill. After dinner some headed off to the bar for a few drinks. Gaelen, Mark Devlin and I watched Kill Bill, Vol. 2.

Nick left this morning, heading back to Christchurch and beyond, the first of the team to leave. Today we hope to get done the sensor alignment tests we didn't do yesterday.

• Giving the GPS array time to figure for itself out where it was.
• Looking for, and capturing, the star Canopus in star cameras, one of very few stars we can see, since the sun is always up here.
• Taking data with the magnetometer and sun sensor at various different azimuths to align these too.

In the afternoon acclaimed (and bizarre) filmmaker Werner Herzog showed up here to do a bit of filming. He's been in Antartcia for a while filming all sorts of things for a documentary he's making. Enzo, Mark, Mark, Marie and Barth stayed late to do more noise tests.

ANITA was hoping to do compatibility and the hang test today, but the poor weather has caused them to delay until tomorrow. We're hoping to do our hang test as soon as we can after ANITA is done. We've also gotten news from Gaelen, who made it safely back to Christchurch on a kiwi piloted Herc yesterday. Today we'll do the last button up of the gondola preflight and tomorrow I'll do the final software rundown.

Sat 2006-12-02 23:52:45 UTC

It's early Sunday afternoon. ANITA is outside today doing compatibility. We'll try to do it tomorrow, so that means today we're doing a final button-up of the gondola, finishing all the stuff we didn't do yesterday. The airfield was moved over here to Willy Field yesterday from the Ice Runway which will close for the season. As a result, regular shuttle service has started between here and McMurdo, allowing us to be a bit more flexible in our schedule. It also means more people out here doing things.

As for BLAST, we've been doing a bit of last minute prep work, flight scheduling, and waiting for launch. Both Paul Devlin and Pete Hargrave left yesterday. We also had Jamie Bock and Bill Jones, both from Caltech, stop by to take a look at the telescope. They're both involved in a project at South Pole and were passing through McMurdo. More news later, I should go outside to catch the launch.

A few worries going up: one of the back-up gyros seems to have issues, and the GPS is not performing at peak. One DAS card stopped working briefly on the way up (a much less worrysome echo of our problems in Sweden), and an unusually cold Helium-4 stage. Since getting up, we've successfully unlocked (which has always failed in the past), discovered the pointing system is working very well and have done a few preliminary maps on a very bright source to calculate pointing offsets. Now we're starting our focus test, which is going swimmingly.

The first eighteen hours or so after launch were, naturally hectic. We had a lot of things to do to set up the telescope before we lost out line-of-sight communication with the balloon. In addition to just making sure everything worked, we had to focus the telescope, a new procedure, which went pleasingly well. After losing line-of-sight, we slowly settled into our regular routine: Jeff, Ed and I would be on the night shift. Barth, Chris and Enzo would be on the afternoon shift, and Matt, Nick and Greg in Palestine would take the morning shift. Other could come and go as they please.

We've now been at float for four and a half days and things are going very well. There have been a few run-of-the-mill emergencies, but no show stoppers, fortunately. Because everything is performing as planned, we're in "schedule file mode" most of the time, which means that BLAST is operating autonomously on a premade schedule which we uploaded before flight. This is a welcome change from our previous flight from Sweden, where things went poorly and we were forced to manually control the telescope the whole time. (Not because it couldn't have done things automatically, but because we had to do different observations than the ones we had programmed into the autopilot before launch.) Becuase this time BLAST is running automatically, shifts are mostly fairly low-key, and involve looking at the data to make sure everything is working as it should. And, of course, dealing with those run-of-the-mill emergencies, when they arise. One thing that is occupying some of our time is trying to figure out when the cryogens will run out, which will dictate how long the flight will last. The calculations are a bit imprecise, but we're no where near done yet.

Due to most things being closed down Saturday, Sunday and Monday, we've had to make several alterations to our usual schedule. Chris Field, from CSBF, has been driving us to and from McMurdo when we need to change shifts. As well, Matt and Nick agreed to fill in for us for a few hours so that everyone down here on the ice could enjoy the Christmas feast in the galley. For those of us on the night shift it was effectively breakfast, but for most people it was dinner. Whatever you call it, it was a tasty concoction of lobster, duck and beef wellington.

The other bit of news I have concerns SBI. They showed for their first launch attempt on Christmas Eve day and managed to get a good launch. A welcome Christmas present for them, we thought. Unfortunately Christmas Day (that's yesterday down here) brought bad news for them: they were having serious communication issues with their flight computers and they decided to terminate the payload early Christmas morning, before the payload got off the ice shelf. Their reason for making this call is so that they can recover it quickly and return next year to try again.

Just to round things out, ANITA has started their second lap of the pole. Haven't heard much from them, but hopefully they'll get further out onto the ice shelf where they want to be this time round. We're just approaching the Ronne Ice Shelf now. We appear to be about half way around.

Last minute update: as I was sitting here writing this, I heard faintly outside the sound of someone yelling. Curious, I went outside to discover it was a (presumably very lost) seal tooling around the camp. Included are some pictures.

ANITA's still up and taking data. It's been a season of strange strasopheric weather, and we're now firmly caught in the centre of the stratospheric vortex and headed very slowly towards the pole. This may make recovery a bit of a challenge, but this worry is offset to a great deal for us by the remarkably good performance we've seen from the telescope. Unfortunately, it could mean that the recovery team may be here for a while.

(Oh yeah, I finally found the time to stitch together the panoramas of both ANITA and our launch, so please take a look at the panoramas page.)

Tue 2007-01-30 19:02:05 UTC

Well, it's been a month since I got back, and I've finally found the time to put up the last of the picutres. I left, as scheduled, on the 30th of December, but not on the flight I was scheduled on. That flight, a C-17, was grounded in Christchurch due to fears of bad weather down at McMurdo later in the day. However, Ed and I, along with a number of other scientists, but no one else from our group, were put on a LC-130 "Hercules" flight that was leaving earlier in the day. We got the call just before we were supposed to head out to Willy Field to board, so our departure was rather rushed. Fortunately we had done all our packing the day before for bag drag, so we made it to the plane in time.

The LC-130 flight was cramped and cold, but uneventful. Fortunately Ed and I had been working the night shift, so we slept for most of the flight back to New Zealand. Other than the half-dozen scientists (including three crew members of the Swedish ice-breaker that was heading towards McMurdo—they had been airlifted to McMurdo so they could make their flight out) the flight was full of USAF personnel. Obviously the original plan for the day had been to get the servicemen out on the LC-130, while the scientists rode in style in the C-17. Barth and Enzo, who were not on our flight, remained in McMurdo until after termination, a few days later.

Deplaning in Christchurch, the first thing I noticed was how humid it was. Later I was also struck by the proliferation of plant life, something I hadn't seen for two months. We caught a lift to our B&Bs, and were able to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening getting re-acquainted with polite society. Our flight to LA via Auckland left the following afternoon. My biggest problem now was that my ticket for the LA to Toronto leg of my journey was not until the 15th. I needed to get it changed. I tried in Christchurch for a while to get through to Air Canada via Skype, but with little luck, due to intermittant wireless connectivity. Nevertheless we headed to Auckland in the morning, and while waiting a few hours in the Auckland airport for our trans-Pacific flight, I was able to contact Air Canada via Skype and have my ticket changed to something more appropriate.

The Aucland to LA flight was as boring as usual. Ed and I were sitting together, which made things a little more interesting, but we were both still on strange schedules, and we ended up sleeping for part of the journey. We also held the distinction of being the only people on the 747 who were not served dinner (a mix up quickly corrected). We left Auckland Sunday afternoon, the last day of the year, and, due to the date line, made it into LA the morning of the same day, some number of hours before we left Auckland. Immigration went smoothly, but it took at least an hour for our luggage to be disgored by the luggage mangling device, so it was a good thing our following flights weren't until later that afternoon (2pm for Ed to Vancouver, 3pm for me, back to Toronto).

We managed to get some lunch at the airport, and by the time my plane departed, I was ready to sleep again. I slept the entire flight, and woke up just as we were coming in for landing at Pearson, around 10 at night, local time. I made it downtown with fifteen minutes before midnight, tossed my luggage in the lab, and was buying some dinner as Toronto ushered in the 2007. My sleep schedule thoroughly randomised, I then went back to the lab and worked all night, monitoring the telescope, which was still taking data. In the afternoon I finally made the trek back to my apartment and got settled back in. Sometime later the flight was terminated, resulting in much excitement. In the end, however, we're happy with the result: we recovered the pressure vessel, with it's precious cargo of data, and are now eager to get to work on the analysis.

For all of you who wrote me during this campaign, thanks for your words. I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond to more of you than I did. I am astounded at how many people have ended up reading this journal. I hope you found it worth your while.