One of the extremely cool things we were hoping to do! get close to a science team, and go out with them. This is Pat's ride out to Heald Island, in the Koettlitz glacier to help launch an under-ice rover camera.
The passengers had to wear the same sharp helmets as the pilots.
The rover is launched through a simple, small, hand-drilled hole. Other rovers being tested down here need huge support equipment, and an eight foot wide hole.
Most of the ice we are working in is pure crystalline blue, but some parts of it have sponge-like formations of air bubbles. These are about a foot down into the ice. You are looking at an area two feet wide.
The equipment is being assembled and tested. The rover is the small cylinder with holes all over it. Pat machined the holes to reduce its weight, and help to make it neutral bouyancy. He also designed and built the cradle it sets on for testing.
Launching the rover.
An edge of the Koettlitz glacier, and beyond it, the mountains forming the Antarctic Dry Valleys.
Some of hundreds of blue melt pools, now frozen, within a rift in the glacier. Mt Discovery beyond, about 14 miles away.
Looking across the quarter-mile wide rift, and the melt pools to the camp tent.
The ride home is landing.
The passengers had to wear the same sharp helmets as the pilots.
The rover is launched through a simple, small, hand-drilled hole. Other rovers being tested down here need huge support equipment, and an eight foot wide hole.
Most of the ice we are working in is pure crystalline blue, but some parts of it have sponge-like formations of air bubbles. These are about a foot down into the ice. You are looking at an area two feet wide.
The equipment is being assembled and tested. The rover is the small cylinder with holes all over it. Pat machined the holes to reduce its weight, and help to make it neutral bouyancy. He also designed and built the cradle it sets on for testing.
Launching the rover.
An edge of the Koettlitz glacier, and beyond it, the mountains forming the Antarctic Dry Valleys.
Some of hundreds of blue melt pools, now frozen, within a rift in the glacier. Mt Discovery beyond, about 14 miles away.
Looking across the quarter-mile wide rift, and the melt pools to the camp tent.
The ride home is landing.
1 comment:
VERY cool excursion....!!
Always wanted to do something like the rover under the ice in Colorado! A big hello and happy holidays from the whole water gang
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