Going away party

I had a pleasant surprise today. My research student threw a little going away party, complete with hand-made party hats, noise makers, and balloons. They clearly put a lot of time into it. The hats had clever sayings on them, and they made good use of a Happy Birthday balloon by turning it into a Happy CREST Flight balloon. The little object dangling from the balloon was labeled "CREST instrument."

Awesome!

Thanks, Nick, Kirk, and Adam!

Why Antarctica?

Good question. To answer that, consider that I am sending a huge instrument essentially to outer space, hanging from a monstrous helium-filled balloon. CREST weighs about 7000 lbs. What would happen if that came crashing into your living room? Nothing good, I think.  To avoid dropping our instrument Wizard-of-Oz-like uninvited into something man-made we go where the likelihood of finding human structures is very small. This includes places like northern Canada, Australia, the oceans, New Mexico, and Antarctica.

A balloon and instrument just after launch.  The pre-deployed parachute is visible.

Still, with all those choices, the question remains: why Antarctica?  Consider what happens after our instrument achieves float altitude at 120,000 feet. (Challenge: How many miles is that? How many kilometers?) It begins to drift with the wind, just like a hot air balloon would.  But at 120,000 ft, winds blow either east to west or west to east, depending on the time of year.  And the wind speed is usually quite high: many tens of mph. This means that the balloon and instrument cover a lot of ground very quickly. What may have started as empty country (eg New Mexico) quickly ends up being populated (eg Los Angeles!). 

A balloon and instrument at float altitude, fully expanded (seen through a telescope).

Antarctica has the advantage that east and west directions form tight circles about the south pole. So a balloon sent up from McMurdo Station will take about 10 or 15 days to go around the pole and end up back at McMurdo. Very convenient, since then we can decide whether to take one more time around or bring it down. And all along we never have to worry about running into someplace like Los Angeles or Buenos Aires.  Any other launch site mentioned above runs that risk.  Plus, there is no chance that our instrument will get tangled up in a tree in Antarctica.

Here I go again....

Well, it's fall 2011, and I am heading back to McMurdo Station in Antarctica for the third time. Previously I visited there in 2005 and 2008. You can view a blog about those trips at http://antarctic-scott.blogspot.com.

The first time (December 2005) I went as a team member on the CREAM experiment (http://cosmicray.umd.edu/cream/cream.html), which is designed to detect cosmic ray elements (hydrogen through iron) at high energies. CREAM has flown 6 times now - or is it 7? Lots. My duties were to help prepare the instrument for flight. I got to see it launched on the high altitude balloon by a NASA team. In January 2008 I went back to participate in recovery of the instrument after it came back to earth, at the end of the flight. I was there and saw a different part of the summer season in McMurdo.

Now I am going to prepare the CREST instrument for launch. I'll be with the early crew - arriving in Antarctica about November 1, 2011. This is springtime in Antarctica. Days are very close to 24 hours long already at McMurdo (78 degrees south latitude, above the Antarctic Circle, which starts at 67 degrees latitude).

Going to Antarctica is a once in a lifetime experience I am getting to do for the third time now. I never thought my physics PhD would take me to such a place. Each time I go I think it is my last time, but hope it is not. In this blog, I'll share living conditions, progress on CREST, and any other random thoughts I deem worth sharing. I plan to provide lots of pictures. Sit back and enjoy!