Planes and satellites

Twin otters landing at Penguin Ranch (not my shot)

Current conditions: Temp 25ºF (13ºF with windchill).  Mostly cloudy.  Population: 787

A quick note about planes.  Most people and cargo are transported between Christchurch and McMurdo on a USAF C17, an enormous transport plane.  Even helicopters arrive in their cargo hold.  At this time of year, a C17 is supposed to arrive in McMurdo at least three times per week, each time dropping off its payload and then leaving the same day.  

Helicopter being birthed from a C17.  It looks kind of like the birth of a Weddell seal.

One C17 has been allocated by the Air Force for this purpose.  It is old (at least 20 years) and showing its age.  First, the windshield broke (boomerang back to Christchurch and a one week delay).  Then, the toilet broke (boomerang back to Christchurch and a one-day delay).  Next, the crew found a cracked turbine blade in the engine (a four-day delay).  Now, there is trouble with fueling (another four-day delay).  

Aside from preventing mail, people and fresh food from getting to the base, the repeated breakages don't give me much confidence in getting on and off the ice safely.  Nor do they engender confidence in the Air Force (sorry, Dean).

Other aircraft in service down here are: 

• LC130's (C130's with skis), a military transport that moves people and cargo from here to the pole (not yet arrived)
• deHavilland Twin Otters: a Canadian, 19-passenger, twin-turboprop, short takeoff and landing (STOL) utility plane that takes people out to field camps and fuel caches.  An Antarctic and Arctic mainstay. 
• A turbo Basler:  A converted DC3 that is slightly longer, with turboprop engines and new avionics.  The Basler flies between McMurdo and the larger field sites, including the pole.  Dean has a type-rating in the DC3 and is threatening to quit his day job at Stanford and come down here to fly the Basler.
• Helicopters.  These deliver people and cargo to small, close-in, field camps.  They have a limited range.

All of these aircraft are lighter than the C17, needing shorter runways, and can land on the closer of the two airstrips, Willy Field.  C130's are stuck out at Phoenix Airfield by White Island.

Now on to satellites.

The Near Earth Network: McMurdo's Radome is circled in red.

On Sunday, we toured NASA's Near-Earth Network Satellite facility.  The Near-Earth Network is comprised of 20 national, international and commercial tracking sites that use satellites to monitor weather and climate.  Because Antarctica is, by international treaty, reserved for only peaceful pursuit of research, the base cannot access any spy or military surveillance satellites.  Also, all downloads must be made publicly available.  Although the military does access some of the polar-orbiting weather satellites through McMurdo's antennae, it must also post any data within minutes of receiving it.

Satellites tracked at McMurdo and their orbits

So why is NASA here?  Because each of the polar-orbiting satellites passes over Antarctica every 100 minutes.  With the earth rotating underneath, each satellite sees much of the earth daily.  So all of these satellites combined give a detailed image of the earth's health.  Once in a while, McMurdo's antenna gets a peek at the southern loop of a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, permitting faster telecommunication.

Inside the Radome.  It was freezing.

The 10-meter antenna at McMurdo sits like a marshmallow on top of Arrival Heights, the high point of the base.  NASA initially built "the Radome" in 1995 to map the continent. That task took two years to complete because: the solar batteries only worked during daylight, the continent had frequent cloud cover, and the two satellites only saw the continent on 25 brief passes per day.  Since then, satellites and their batteries have become much more sophisticated, and communications more expansive (people interested in the nitty-gritty can look here).  Over the next few years, the communications bandwidth will expand even further.  Unfortunately, no one is expecting this expansion to trickle down to the average McMurdian.  Sunspots, yes; Netflix, no.

Six satellites that McMurdo tracks focus on the earth, looking at winds, temperatures, forest coverage, etc. They've even tracked whales.  Some of what they track depends on who is paying them for the information. Two satellites observe the sun for solar flares.  If you want to see who is looking at what, go to this site.  You'll see in real-time which antennae are currently operating, which satellite they're talking to, and possibly what they are looking at.  You can also track the deep space satellites although these are not followed in Antarctica (no polar orbit).  As for spy satellites, you'll have to go to a different continent.

Dean with the two people who run the command center:  Steve (?) and Roy whom we
eat dinner with on a regular basis.  Find the rubber duck (used to quack at the boss on the phone)
and the Weddell Seal sock puppet.