October 26 - Nov 3 @ Work
I'm a little behind on updates, I finally got an off-day, so now I have a chance to publish a post! I've been here a full two weeks. Time is flying! Our first week in town we got settled in, explored around town, completed all our trainings and orientations, our cargo arrived and we got to go to work!
Getting to Work
We were able to get out to LDB, the Long Duration Ballooning facility on Saturday the 29th. It was exciting to finally check out the facilities. LDB is a temporary facility about 6 miles from town on the Ross Ice Shelf. All the buildings are on skis and are mobile. During the winter the buildings get dragged up onto raised snow berms to minimize snow from drifting and burying everything. Then before the summer season the heavy equipment operators come in a regrade the ground and move the buildings back into place. There are two high bays, a few buildings for the CSBF rigger shop, the telemetry building, toilets, a galley, and a few other plywood shacks for offices and warming up. Oh, and three outhouses "short drops". The two high bays, at 49 feet, are the tallest buildings on the continent and the tallest buildings in the world on skis.
Most mornings we head out on shuttles at 7:30 to get to work. It is a 30-45 minute drive across the peninsula towards Scott Base and onto the snow roads depending on the shuttle vehicle. As soon as the vehicles pass by Observation Hill on Scott Base Road, Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror come into view. Mt. Erebus is the southern-most active volcano, it is constantly smoking off the top. Folks working in town can only see it when getting of the airplane, or if they go on a hike out of town. We get to see it from our high-bay doors. Off to the right as we drive are White Island, Minna Bluff, and Black Island. Between Mt. Terror and White Island is just snow and ice as far as you can see as the Ross Ice Shelf extends toward the continent. In the distance looking back towards McMurdo and Observation Hill, is the Royal Society Range. It is an absolutely stunning place to work.
For the first week or so we rode in passenger vans, but lately have been getting to take the behemoth "Kress" vehicle. Its very cool looking, has tires taller than me, and an interior that is as cold as ice. It is a very slow, gently bumpy ride, that puts most people to sleep. Perfect for reading a book if you can dare to remove your hands from your pockets to turn the page.
Here are some views during the commute.
(Also) Getting to Work
Our two 10-foot shipping containers arrived on a cargo flight Friday (28th) so we got to work unpacking them as soon as we could on Saturday. We had everything unloaded and mostly sorted by the end of the day. Unlike Texas, we didn’t have to clean bugs out of every nook and cranny before we started moving boxes in. We are all glad about that.
It is quite the contrast to see the shipping containers sitting on the ice rather than the boiling hot asphalt in Texas. The debate is ongoing if packing the containers in 109 F heat was worse than unpacking in 0 F weather. I think this is worse, at least in Texas we could pack in the evening when it got a little cooler, so ... 90 F instead of 100. It is just all cold all the time here. It is certainly worse to be working inside the high bay with doors open here. Everything made of metal instantly cools down, and it makes insert work very unpleasant. That is the downside of using highly conductive metals like copper in your experiment, I suppose; they cool really really fast. I took to standing with my hands practically inside the mobile space heaters to keep them nimble.
Our 20-foot sea container and large cryostat crate didn't arrive until Monday afternoon. Somehow we managed to pack everything we needed to start working on the telescopes in the two ten-foots, all except our tool chest with our hex keys, screwdrivers, and razor blades. (All necessary for un-taping and taking apart the telescopes.) As far as I know that was a stroke of luck. We managed to scrounge enough tools from the supply closet in town and the CSBF guys at LDB to make progress over the weekend and not lose any time.
Getting the telescopes ready to go in the cryostat is my main priority and responsibility at the beginning of the campaign. First thing on Sunday we got the telescopes out on the tables and started the post-shipping inspections. We had several updates to make, replacing old structural truss rods with new ones, swapping out filters, and fixing grounding issues, followed by all the general inspections, taping down loose wires, tightening every screw, and finally putting the copper-clad G-10 wraps that enclose the telescope innards. With six telescopes this turns into a multi-day affair with lots of people helping.
During final inspections, I found something odd that we had intended to change a few years ago but had forgotten about. So, I rushed to get that fixed without delaying cryostat close-up. Not changing it wouldn’t have been detrimental to the data, but hopefully the fix will help reduce the noise on one of the telescopes! 😊
Insert work feels like arts and crafts time at summer camp; lots of shiny tape, scissors, and popsicle sticks. The only thing missing is glitter glue.
I realized I am switching between calling our telescopes, “telescopes” and “inserts”. This is because naming convention consistency is hard. We normally call them inserts because they are inserted into the cryostat. Very inventive, I know. But I forget that is very colloquial and jargony, and the most generic term for them is telescope, and sometimes we call them that. Either way, they are basically the eyeballs of the experiment. Complete with sunglasses (filters that block out unwanted light), refracting lenses for focusing, and the detector retinas themselves. SPIDER’s six eyes.
Why is it called “SPIDER”, Elle? In the before times, when I was but a wee middle schooler, the initial proposals for SPIDER called for 8 telescopes, and for the payload to descend from the balloon after launch. In effect, neither of those things are true, but the name stuck. Anyway…lets get out of this rabbit hole.
Lloro Unboxing
We were excited for our cryostat (Lloro) to arrive on Monday, primarily to see if she arrived unscathed. As for me, I wanted my fancy tweezer set from the tool chest. It was cool to see the crates up against Mt. Erebus when we arrived in the morning. The CSBF riggers helped get everything inside. Rather than stand inside and be miserable, I took pictures from outside so at least I had some sunshine helping to warm me up.
As soon as she was unboxed, a team set to work getting the cryostat out of the shipping configuration and into working position.
The last eleven days have been a straight grind to try to get the cryostat closed up and on the vacuum pump. We have all been working hard and are on the pump as of today, Nov. 9th, three days ahead of schedule!
(These pictures mostly cover up through Nov. 3)
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