Boarding the Gould

Today was a day for last minute purchases in Punta Arenas and for meeting our boat. After we were issued the parkas, raingear and other clothing the the US Antarctic Program issues all participants, we boarded the R/V Laurence M. Gould. At 230 feet long, the Gould is a big red boat. She has double hulls and is strengthened to travel through ice. Her primary task, apart from supplying Palmer station, is transporting scientists on month-long scientific fishing cruises through the Southern Ocean.

Aboard we tried out the life boats and were assigned our cabins. My cabin, shared with Kelly, is on the starboard side, closest to the bow. This is a great location if the seas are calm but could be uncomfortable if the seas are big. We haven't heard anything from the captain on the weather yet but 30-60 foot seas are typical across the Drake Passage.

Punta Arenas Chile

After a connection in Santiago, Chile, we have arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city in the world. We will be here long enough to collect our extreme cold weather gear and then will sail past the tip of South America to Antarctica.











Punta Arenas is a grand place with beautiful Spanish architecture and exploration history dripping from the street lights. Ernest Shackleton reached Punta Arenas and 1916 and it was from here that he launched his successful rescue attempts to Elephant Island.



























There is an impressive monument in the central square and, according to legend, rubbing the toe of the one of the figures on the base of the statue is said to bring calm seas in the Drake Passage - the open water beyond Cape Horn that is legendary for huge seas and wind. I'm pretty sure everyone in the group has given the toe a good rub.

Saying Goodbye

This was my last day at work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena and also the last day I was in California prior to leaving.

I thought it would be a good chance to look back at the projects I've been involved with in my career. Working at JPL so far has been a complete joy to me and I'm immensely proud of the projects I've had the opportunity to be involved with. Just getting to work at JPL has been a dream come true and then having such interesting project to contribute to has just made it better. I am taking a 7 month leave of absence but then I'm looking forward to getting back and getting involved at JPL again.

The first project I was involved in was Cassini-Huygens which arrived at Saturn in 2004 after an amazing voyage through the extended F and G rings. Cassini's mission is to study the Saturnian system, making close flybys of the rings and many moons. It carried the European Huygen's probe which descended into Titan's atmosphere in 2005. Cassini has made a number of remarkable discoveries including the three new Saturnine moons, giant lakes on Titan and ice volcanos on Enceladus. In addition to the scientific data, Cassini has returned reams of gobstoppingly gorgeous images. I chose four of my favorites and copied them below. See Casini's home on the web for more: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

I worked in the Cassini Spacecraft Engineering Office as a sequencing engineer in 2000 and 2001.

The images are: 1. Taken in October 2005, the moon Dione outlined beautifully against the face of Saturn. The thin outlines of the B and C rings are visible. Cassini was almost even with the ring plane at the time. 2. Taken in 2006, Saturn against its rings. 3. Taken in 2006, Titan and Enceladus seen against the ring plane. 4. Taken in 2006, Water Geysers on Enceladus.































In 2001 and 2002 I worked on the Spitzer space telescope. Spitzer is an infrared telescope which gives it the ability to look through the dust around young stars to see galaxies as they form and give insight into planetary formation. Spitzer also returns stunningly beautiful images. All of them are false color, with the colors assigned by scientists. I put two of my favorites below. Spitzer can be found at:
http://jpl.nasa.gov/missions/missiondetails.cfm?mission=Spitzer

The images are: 1. The Pleides, also named as the Seven Sisters, a very young star cluster located in the Taurus constellation. The image was taken in 2007. 2. The Pinwheel Galaxy. What's particularly interesting about this image is that it shows that organic compounds, present elsewhere, are nearly absent near the edge of the galaxy. This suggests that habitable planets will be found central to galaxies.

















In 2003 and 2004, I was one of the design teams leads for a future mission called Terrestrial Planet Finder(TPF). TPF will be able to deteect the signatures of water and life processes in the atmosphere of extrasolar planets. Below is a sketch of what the telescope might look like:











Starting in 2006, I have been an engineer on the Kepler telescope mission. Kepler is designed to provide the first survey of solar-type stars for earth-like planets. Kepler is currently undergoing final testing at Ball Aerospace and will launch in April 2009. Of everything I have worked on so far at JPL, I think I am most proud of the work that will be done by Kepler. It will rewrite our understanding of galaxies and our place in the universe. Being on the team has been like being part of a small and extremely smart family. In addition to the engineering work, Kepler has also afforded me the opportunity of doing public speaking and outreach, soem of it in colloboration with JPL artist-in-residence Dan Goods. The pictures are of the telescope as it is today and some public events .

























That wraps up the review of the projects I'll be saying a temporary" goodbye" to at JPL. There are also people to say goodbye to. My project manager on Kepler, Jim Fanson threw me a nice going away party at JPL and my coworker Roberta threw me a lovely dinner party. Thank you Jim and Roberta !

And finally, I'll be saying a temporary goodbye to my dog, Summer. Although huskies were used by the American, Australian, British and other bases as recently as the 1990s, the Antarctic conservation act now strictly prohibits all introduced plants or animals.

I'll miss you Summer, take care and have fun while I'm gone.

Getting "PQ"ed

A big part of getting ready to go to Antarctica is getting Physically Qualified ("PQ"ed). Every participant in the US Antarctica Program has to go through this, whether they are an employee like me or a grantee. The reason behind this is of course is of course that hospitals are a long way away from The Ice. There is a doctor at each US station but the equipment and supplies for dealing with a serious health problem is very limited. Medical evacuations are possible in some circumstances but always take time and huge amounts of resources. The better approach is just to send healthy people.

So, I've been diligently going to all of my doctor's appointments for the past two months. I've been to my dentist, my family practice doctor, my optometrist, the blood test lab, and the urine test lab.

And today it was a big relief to get word that all of the required paperwork has been received in order. I'm officially PQed ! This clear the way for my travel arrangements to be made to Punta Arenas Chile and to the continent.

And training to be useful..

In small communities everyone has to fulfill multiple roles. So, at Palmer, with only 35 people, everyone has a lot to do. In addition to my usual job doing research, I'll also be help in times of emergency as part of the fire fighting squad and the ocean search and rescue team. To get ready for these extra jobs, I flew back to Colorado to meet some of the other people who will be going down to The Ice with me.

We spent one week at Red Rocks Fire Training Academy in Arvada. At the Academy the first thing we did was get familiar with the fireproof clothing firefighters wear -fireproof pants, jackets, gloves, suspenders, hoods, helmets and boots. Then we were issued air packs called Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) that allow firefighters to enter smoky rooms. These are nearly identical to SCUBA equipment. Wearing all this gear is cumbersome and hot !! We were sweating buckets before we had even started doing enything.

After we had all our gear we were introduced to the concrete fire house. The number one job of firefighters is to search for missing persons and quickly get them out of danger. But the rooms that firefighters enter may be filled with heat and smoke, meaning they can't stand up or see. So we learned how to crawl along the floor with our masks blacked out, sweeping along the floor with a fire axe and testing the floor and walls as we went. This may sound easy but it was a lot of hard work !

Once we got pretty good at practicing without fire, the instructors set fires though out the building. Moving through a burning building is scary - every part of your brain is shouting "get out of there". I enjoyed the drills though; once I got used to breathing through the SCBA mask and trusting that my clothing would block the heat, I relaxed and focused on getting the job done.

We also learned how to hook up and use fire hoses, a lot of fire theory and practiced our team work skills. Knowing we can count everyone on the team will be very important at Palmer. We all have different roles to perform. I'm the marshall of the team so I need to understand not just how to do the fire fighter job but also what its safe to ask other team members to do. By the end of the week we weren't professional firefighters but we were pretty confident amateurs. In the team photo below, look at the flames. Those gasoline fires were burning about 900 deg F and where we were standing it was several hundreds degrees. Hot work !

















The week after fireschool, eight of us went to Gunnison CO for training in ocean rescue and searches for missing people. We had one free day so three of us spent the day hiking and taking photos in the nearby mountains.





























During the week at search and rescue school we practiced searching for lost persons and pulling victims from the water. The orange suits are cold water immersion suits that we'll wear if we ever have to abandon ship in Antarctica. They are "one size fits all" and seal with neoprene gaskets around the wrists and neck. Getting them on is a challenge but floating around in the water with them is fun.






















On the final day we had an all-day search exercise, looking for a "lost person" in the surrounding mountains. The lost person turned out to be a small doll, whom we came close to but never found. The photo is my search partner Jon with the doll at the end of the day.
When we're actually using these skills in Antarctica it will be a lot colder than it was in sunny Colorado ! However I think the skills will transfer over. Deployment to Palmer is getting closer, just a few more weeks until I leave !

Training to be a scientist...

Even though I'm an engineer in my daily job, I've never used the equipment that I'll be responsible for once I get down to Palmer. So, for the last couple of weeks I've been training for my job.

First I flew San Diego to learn how to monitor the hole in the ozone layer. Think of the ozone layer as the earth's sunglasses, protecting life on the surface from the sun's strongest ultraviolet rays, which can cause serious problems such as skin cancer and DNA degeneration. In the 1980s is was noticed that human-generated compounds, primarily the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) then used in air conditioners and aerosol and were destroying this layer. At that time, ozone thinning was occuring on a seasonal basis over the whole planet. In 1985 the Montreal Protocol outlawed the further use of the CFC chemicals. In the 20 years since then, the ozone layer has significantly recovered over most of the planet. The exception, so far at least, is over the tip of South America, Australia, New Zealand and Antartica. Over these areas, the ozone hole has remained large with the largest size hole measured in 2000. Who does the missing ozone effect ? Well, almost every species on the food chain.

In plants, as in animals, higher levels of ultraviolet radiation causes DNA damage. A study of plants atTierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America, found DNA damage to plants on days the ozone hole was overhead to be 65% higher than on non-ozone-hole days (Rousseaux et. al., 1999). The effects of increased ultraviolet light on marine life is also thought to be harmful, however studies of the direct effect on shrimp, krill and fish are difficult to carry out. The ozone hole lasts for about 10-12 weeks each year and the probable effect is decreased reproductive capacity and larval development during that time. One study (Smith et. al., 1990) calculates the ozone effect to be responsible for a 2-4% annual decrease in phytoplankton population.

The effects on the human population are significantly easier to measure. In Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city in the world (53°S), with a population of 154,000, skin cancer has risen dramatically. Cases increased 66% from 1994-2000 compared to 1987-1993. This corresponds exactly with the increased ultraviolet radiation levels seem each spring for the past 20 years, when the Antarctic ozone hole has moved over the city. It is exactly this increase in ultraviolet radiation that I'll be measuring once I get to Palmer. And when I do, I'll be heeding the lesson of Punta Arenas and wearing my sunglasses and sunblock !

In the meantime, if you want to monitor the ozone layer for yourself, you can view satellite images at:

http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html

Two good sites for learning more are at:
http://www.wunderground.com/education/holefaq.asp
and
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060527093645.htm


After learning about the ozone hole, I went on a visit that I really enjoyed to the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. At NOAA I learned how to take very precise air samples for the global greenhouse gases network. This is the network, started by Professor Keeling of Scripps Institute in 1958, which identified the trend and cause of global warming. Taking samples of the air in Antarctica is ideal because of its remoteness from cars, people and cities. Trace gases such as carbon dioxide mesured in Antarctica give us a good understanding of their global concentrations.

The website of air sampling network at NOAA describes more about the project and is a great starting point if you want to learn more:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/flask.html

That's all for now. I'll keep you posted as I get closer to deployment.