Ready to Fly!

Today SPIDER completed its final pre-launch milestone: compatibility, commonly called the “hang test”.  This means that we are flight-ready for the next available launch date, which could be as soon as tomorrow (New Year’s Day 2015, our time).  Fingers crossed…

The hang test is both a rehearsal of launch operations and a test of all in-flight communications and control systems.  The completed payload was hung from the Boss (our launch vehicle, a highly-customized crane) and lifted off of our deck.  We had a pre-rehearsal test of that process yesterday, during which we ironed out a few procedure kinks (i.e. how to reach the top of the gondola to install the Boss hook!).  The CSBF team then installed a handful of launch parts on the undercarriage, notably the solar panels that power the NASA electronics package and the ballast hopper.  SPIDER uses a pump to maintain its superfluid helium tank on the ground (at float it is just open to space), so that pump needs to be carefully transferred to the deck of the Boss.  The Boss then carried SPIDER back from the deck as if to take it to the launch pad, held it there for a couple of hours while we checked telemetry, and then returned it to the deck.

Now it’s time to get this in the air and do some science…

Fully operational battle station!

SPIDER hanging from the Boss, as it will during launch operations, with Mt. Erebus in the background.

The proud parents: Bill and Barth, PIs of our project.

COSI/SPB Aloft!

This morning saw the second LDB launch of the season!  The payload, COSI, is a gamma ray telescope built by Steve Boggs’s team at Berkeley and collaborators.  COSI uses an array of cooled germanium detectors to measure the energy and direction of incoming gamma rays from space, based upon the way they Compton scatter among the detectors.

The balloon also generated a large amount of interest, since COSI is the first science payload for NASA’s new super-pressure balloon (SPB).  SPBs, also known as Ultra-Long Duration Balloons (ULBDs) are designed to stay aloft for hundreds of days, rather than the dozens achieved with current heavy-lift balloons.  Unlike most payloads, which spiral around the Pole and land in Antarctica, COSI/SPB hopes to leave the continent entirely and fly for months across the ocean.  COSI hopes to be recovered in Chile or Africa, but should get plenty of useful data back over telemetry even if it is lost in the ocean.  ULDB flights are hugely anticipated in the astronomical community, because they will enable extremely long mid-latitude flights – a real competitor to a satellite for certain applications (and much, much cheaper!).

I was lucky enough to be on-station to witness this one in person (which involved coming in on a 3:30 a.m. shuttle before they closed the road…).  During launch prep a thick fog rolled in, such that we couldn’t even see the Boss from the edge of the pad.  We missed the initial inflation entirely, including the unique “tow balloon” that lifts up the top portion of the SPB during the initial stages of inflation.  Fortunately the fog rolled back during inflation, allowing us to see the action.

COSI preparing to launch. The balloon is on the left, the launch vehicle holding COSI on the right, the flight train in between.

Launch was made particularly spectacular by the haze left by the dense fog bank.  From our vantage point the balloon eclipsed the sun, which was incredible to watch.  My colleague Jon Gudmundsson has posted a great video of the launch, up through the eclipse.

COSI/SPB released into the foggy sky!

During COSI’s initial ascent, ice crystals formed a remarkable halo around the sun.  This formed a hazy, sparkling rainbow (actually multiple “icebows”) that the payload drifted by, as well as a dramatic spotlight effect beneath the sun.

COSI aloft, passing by an icebow (rainbow caused by ice crystals)

A bizarre spotlight effect beneath the sun, just after launch. The Boss is visible just to the right of the spotlight.

Congratulations to the COSI team!  Our turn comes next…

Adelie Penguin!

Today at LDB we were graced with another distinguished visitor – an Adelie penguin!  These are substantially smaller than the Emperor that visited two weeks ago, but all the cuter for it.  The penguin hung out at LDB for much of the day (in fact, he’s still outside our high bay as I write this).

After an active spell before I arrived, he spent a good bit of the late morning chilling out on his belly.

Today’s distinguished visitor: an Adelie penguin!

His activity increased a bit after lunch, particularly when a helicopter flew fairly low over LDB on the way to Willy Field (itself an unusual event).  The thumping noise reverberated off the shipping containers and got the penguin a little excited, so that it scampered around in front of me frantically (which was fantastic – I need to post an animated GIF of that) and got a little closer to me than I would naturally have gone.  It calmed down fairly quickly once the helicopter passed.

“SPIDER is over there!”

Ready for a close-up

Later in the afternoon it was nap time for the penguin, where he remains currently.

Sleepytime

Finally, a couple of photos by others:

Obligatory buddy shot in front of LDB (photo by Sasha Rahlin)

Penguin scooting majestically before SPIDER (photo by Cynthia Chiang)

White Christmas

Christmas day out at LDB was a beautiful one.  It started snowing on Christmas Eve and throughout much of Christmas, leaving the ground soft and the air filled with big, fluffy snowflakes.  Our night shift took advantage of some time alone with the cryostat to decorate the payload for the holiday season, a nice surprise when the rest of us arrived in the morning:

SPIDER’s Christmas decorations, courtesy of night shift.

Steve put up pictures (and a poem!) on his blog – see there for more and better photos!  I’ve attached my favorite of his: SPIDER, fully decorated, seen through the open high bay doors in the snow:

SPIDER seen through the open high bay doors in the snow. Photo by Steve Benton.

The LDB galley had served us a fine holiday lunch on the 24th.  Since most of the CSBF ballooning folks are from Texas, the galley decorations included a little Texas charm:

Tiny Christmas tree in the LDB galley

The 25th and 26th were days off for almost everyone in McMurdo, but not for us.  Our payload is almost flight-ready, but we still had a lot of work to do.  We returned to time in town for dinner, however, which was again an absolute joy.  The main course was among my favorite foods: delicious beef, king crab legs, and assorted other seafood.  It was a good evening, and a good break.

Christmas dinner at McMurdo: beef, king crab legs, and much more

Since we’re across the international date line from the U.S., I called my family in the morning from LDB.  I’m enjoying Antarctica, but still looking forward to getting SPIDER in the air and returning home.

Hanging Out on the Porch

SPIDER is fast approaching flight-readiness, which is very exciting for all of us here.  Last week saw the installation of its last major components: the sun shield, the wing, and the solar panels.

The sun shield is an enormous shell built from carbon fiber struts and gift-wrapped with aluminized Mylar.  It surrounds the back of the instrument like a turtle shell, protecting it from the glare of the sun and supporting our communication antennas.  At balloon altitudes the air is so thin that parts couple to their surroundings mostly through radiation.  A part facing the sun will quickly heat and even melt, while one in the shade will lose its heat to the blackness of space and fall to very low temperatures.  The Toronto team has put enormous effort in to planning out SPIDER’s thermal architecture: which parts should be mirrored or painted white, which need radiator fins, and how heat should be exchanged between hot and cold parts.  SPIDER will fly with its back to the sun, with the sun shields protecting the delicate instrumentation as it scans black sky.

The wing is an asymmetric extension to one side of the sun shield.  It gives SPIDER’s telescopes a little extra sun protection on that side, so that it can scan a little closer to the sun and cover a bit more sky.

The solar panels are SPIDER’s power plant, providing the electricity needed to operate the entire payload.  SPIDER’s solar cells live on a single massive panel on the wing side of the payload, giving the whole instrument an asymmetric appearance.  They face backward toward the sun in flight, charging a set of car batteries through a charge controller.

With SPIDER nearly complete, we took it on its first trip outside the high bay.  We opened the bay doors and slid it out onto our porch, hanging from the rail crane just as it will hang from the balloon.  We spent some time scanning the instrument, checking the solar panels under sunlight,  and calibrating the pinhole sun sensors – simple light sensors behind pinholes which record our orientation with respect to the sun.  We came back inside when we encountered a few issues with an external pump (later fixed).

This week we’ll be carrying out more extensive testing outside of the high bay, including flight systems and communications.  Launch is fast approaching…

SPIDER sliding out onto the high bay porch, hanging from the central crane rail. The central white cylinder is the cryostat, with its six telescope apertures. The sun shield (not quite complete) surrounds the back, with the wing extension on the right. The solar panels peek out from behind the wing.  The cardboard lens caps of the three star cameras are visible below and to the upper-right of the cryostat.  Liquid helium and liquid nitrogen dewars are arrayed on the porch edge in front of SPIDER.

SPIDER on the porch, as seen from within the high bay. The solar panels and reflective sun shields are clearly visible, as are several cold scientists.  Communication antennas project from the top of the sun shield.

Distinguished Visitors

This week saw the arrival of a large group of DVs (Distinguished Vistors, in local lingo) to the Ice: a delegation of 10 members of Congress, staffers, and members of the NSF and NASA leadership.  Most of the Congressional visitors were members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: from the Republican side of the aisle, Lamar Smith (Chair, TX), Mo Brooks (AL), David Schweikert (AZ), and Chris Collins (NY); from the Democratic side, Donna Edwards (MD), Suzanne Bonamici (OR), and Eric Swalwell (CA).  Also visiting were Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA), Todd Rokita (R-IN), and Jerry McNerney (D-CA).  They were guided by Dr. France Cordova (Director, National Science Foundation), Dr. Kelly Falkner (NSF Division Director, Polar Programs), Dr. Scott Borg (NSF Head of Antarctic Sciences), Brian Stone (NSF Section Head, Antarctic Infrastructure & Logistics), and Dr. John Grunsfeld (NASA, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate).

The U.S. Antarctic Program rolled out the red carpet for the delegation, with a three-day program showing off the impressive variety of work being done on the continent.  Their first stop after landing on the continent was to visit us out at LDB, and as part of the tour they piled into our high bay to visit SPIDER.  It was fun chatting with the Representatives, and I particularly enjoyed speaking with Dr. Cordova, the NSF Director.  It was gratifying seeing so many powerful people crowding to take photos of our work!

Prof. Bill Jones (lower right) explaining SPIDER to the visiting Congressional delegation and NSF/NASA leadership.  SPIDER is just beyond the right edge of the photo.

The delegation took a day trip to the South Pole the next day, returning to McMurdo that evening for a special NSF-hosted reception.  The reception was invitation-only, with invitations apparently assigned mostly based upon what state you were from.  Four young people from SPIDER scored invitations, including me.  The food was excellent, and it was a lot of fun chatting with the DVs and meeting other scientists and support personnel.

The SPIDER team was particularly excited to speak with Dr. Grunsfeld.  He leads NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, which funds the scientific balloon program, and is himself a Ph.D. physicist with an extensive background in balloon-borne astrophysics.  He’s also a former astronaut who personally repaired the Hubble Space Telescope (not once, but three times!), and who famously called into the radio show Car Talk from space.  We all enjoyed meeting him and chatting about his work and ours.  All in all a fun evening!

John Grunsfeld talking us through what to expect from the James Webb Space Telescope and a concept for its successor, the High-Definition Space Telescope.

Members of the SPIDER team with NASA’s John Grunsfeld. Left to right: me, Ziggy Kermish, John Grunsfeld, Ed Young, and Lorenzo Moncelsi.  (Apologies for the slight distortion near the photo edges…)

ANITA Aloft!

The season’s first long-duration balloon is in the air!  The ANITA high-energy neutrino instrument launched for its third flight at 10:24 a.m. on Thursday, December 18th (NZDT).  This was enormously exciting, not just for the ANITA project team but for all of us out here at LDB.  The past few weeks have seen several weather-related scrubs and false starts (which is not at all unusual – we’re at the mercy of the winds!), and with the first launch the whole ballooning endeavor feels much more real.  Congratulations to the ANITA team, and to the folks from Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility (CSBF) who put her in the air!

You can track ANITA’s flight path around the continent at CSBF Antarctica Operations.  Right now the only payloads tracked are ANITA and ANITA HI-CAL, a calibration emitter for ANITA that was hand-launched on a smaller balloon on Friday.  COSI and SPIDER will appear in the right-hand panels once our turn comes. For more details on the launch, see this blog posting at Scientific American by Katie, one of the project’s grad students.

Since the winds were not blowing toward our high bay, most of our team got to watch ANITA’s launch from the edge of the enormous launch pad.  I did not, unfortunately: the detector/readout team spent the morning back in town in Crary Lab, working hard on operations planning for the flight.  We had the live video feed queued up on my laptop, though, and cheered when we saw ANITA take to the air.  The balloon was visible for much of the day from all around the McMurdo area as a tiny white blob drifting slowly up to the heavens.

Since I didn’t see the launch I don’t have any good pictures, but I have attached a couple taken by Bill Jones, our PI.  The scale of the balloon is truly amazing: the massive launch vehicle crane and helium trailer trucks look tiny beside the huge gas bag and flight train.

ANITA on The Boss (launch vehicle crane) at left, connected to the inflating balloon by its flight train.  The trailer truck visible just to the right of the balloon contains enormous gas cylinders for inflating the balloon.

ANITA on its launch vehicle, seconds after balloon release. The balloon is swinging upward and to the left, and will lie just over the launch vehicle at release.  Note the red parachute furled between the balloon and payload, which will bring ANITA back to earth at the end of its flight.

ANITA aloft!

 

Penguin!

When people hear that you’re going to Antarctica, they immediately ask if you’re going to see penguins (and, of course, whether you can bring one back for them!).  For those of us who aren’t biologists, though, seeing a penguin is relatively rare.  Folks can go many ice seasons and never see one.  Penguins are strictly protected by the Antarctic treaty: we aren’t permitted to approach them closely enough to influence their behavior, and the penguin rookeries are mostly off-limits to non-specialists.  Small Adelie penguins are sometimes seen by McMurdo late in the season when the sea ice breaks up, but large emperor penguins are rare sights indeed.  If you are lucky enough to see one, though, it can be a lot of fun.  Penguins are curious birds and have no natural predators on land, so they’re perfectly happy to investigate humans and their artifacts.

So yesterday (Saturday) on the shuttle van ride home, we stopped short when we saw an emperor penguin scooting along parallel to the roadway, heading vaguely toward LDB!  The little guy was far from the sea ice where he makes his home, but he seemed fat and healthy and can make it back if he heads in the right direction.  I couldn’t get a decent picture with my phone from the car, but it was great to finally see one in the wild.  The folks in the next shuttle had an even better experience: the penguin (since christened “George”) strolled up to them standing by the shuttle!  It then proceeded to hang out by LDB for much of the night, which was great for the night crew.  I was very happy to have seen a penguin… but disappointed to have missed the more close-up fun later that evening.

Sunday was supposed to be a day off for some of us, but suddenly turned into a launch attempt day for ANITA (as I write this, it’s on the pad ready to go).  I managed to catch a ride out with some CSBF folks on the last shuttle before they closed the road to LDB.  A bit later we heard the call that George was back, so everyone dropped what they were doing and came running:

When the word “penguin” spreads, everyone comes running!  George is the black and white spot in the center of the photo.

Our friend was there, strolling around behind the high bays by the launch pad.  He alternated between scooting on his belly, waddling on his feet, and giving an occasional loud “caw” to the sky.  I uploaded a quick video showing these three modes of operation: http://youtu.be/NlZs35bXqPc.

He was cute and pudgy, awkward and yet elegant.  Everyone found themselves smiling and occasionally giggling, from the new folks like me to the experienced balloonists.  It was a magical sort of moment.

Our visitor for the day.

By the ice block stack behind the ANITA high bay.

A lineup of excited photographers: Ed, Bill, Anne, Johanna, Ziggy, etc.

I didn’t bring a fancy camera on this trip, and frankly I don’t know how to use one (I should learn for next time!), so others took far better pictures than I did.  Here are a couple that my colleague Ed Young took and passed along, including one of me and our visitor.

Among the flags and cones (courtesy of Ed Young).

Me with our penguin visitor (courtesy of Ed Young).

The Wreck of the Pegasus

On Friday I won the lottery for another recreational trip: an evening visit to the crash site of the Pegasus.  The Pegasus was a C-121 Lockheed Constellation airplane that serviced the Christchurch-Antarctica route for the Navy more than four decades ago.  Planes heading to McMurdo typically carry very little excess fuel, so at some point they reach a point of no return: if they don’t turn back by that point, they have to complete the journey.  On October 8, 1970, the Pegasus got caught in a storm after the point of no return and made a crash landing near the airstrip.  The plane has been left buried in the snow until today, and it has accumulated decades of graffiti from less-than-conscientious visitors.  The nearby Pegasus airfield, the southernmost serving McMurdo, takes its name from the aircraft.

A group of us took a bumpy van ride out to the crash site after dinner and hung around a while to take pictures.  It was a quick trip, but a fun way to see a bit of Antarctic history.

Tail of the Pegasus. Two of the three tail fins were sheared off, while the third (far) one is mostly intact.

View back at the buried Pegasus past one if its engine fairings.

The cockpit of the Pegasus

Buried signifier of Antarctic Development Squadron 6 (the “Puckered Penguins”)

Panoramic view from the Pegasus crash site

Me in front of the Pegasus’s intact tail fin

Fun and Games

The SPIDER team has been working long hours, overnight and over weekends, but we’ve also been having a lot of fun.  This is an incredible place to be, and a fantastic group of people to be here with.  In addition to the hikes and trips I’ve written about already, there have been a lot of little fun things to brighten our days.  So here are a smattering of words and photos from recent life in the ice.

 

---

 

Crary Lab: One Sunday I took a tour of Crary, the main science building.  We’ll move operations there once SPIDER is in flight.  This featured one of the only penguins I have seen so far in Antarctica (all deceased, thus far…) and a fun touch tank of Antarctic sea critters – including a sea spider, of course.

Stuffed penguins in a display case in Crary Lab

Sea spider in the Crary Lab touch tank

 

Obs Tube: A fun stop in town early in the season is the Observation Tube (“Obs Tube”) – a pipe sunk into the sea ice, just large enough to fit one person.  You crawl down the ladder into a glass-walled chamber and look out into the surrounding ocean, dimly lit by sunlight through the ice.  The sights are impressive – small fish and creatures of various sorts, large stalactites of ice growing down from the surface – but the sounds of the ice and distant seals are otherworldly.

Entrance to the Obs Tube, on the sea ice at McMurdo

View up at a “brinicle”: an ice stalactite extending down into the sea ice.

 

Trunnion Throw: One fine day after lunch our team took a walk out to the snow field near LDB for a test of strength: to see who could throw one of our shipping trunnions the farthest.  A fun time was had by all.

Jon preparing to awe the crowd at the Trunnion Throw

 

Cosmic Micro-Rave: In flight our instrument will be protected from the harsh glare of the sun by a sun-shield: a large carbon-fiber frame wrapped in shiny aluminized Mylar.  After assembling the sun-shield we took a little time to install dance lights for a miniature dance party.

The “Cosmic Micro-Rave”: a disco ball set up in the sun shield

 

Trivia Night: Every other Wednesday Gallagher’s pub hosts an evening of pub trivia, which has been a lot of fun.  Team SPIDER has made a good showing the past two weeks, but haven’t quite managed to win.  Next time…