ANITA-II Antarctic Travel Log

November 3-25, 2008

The initial ANITA team arrived the first week of November, and the gondola build was in full swing led by Dana Braun, Brian Hill and Christian Miki by the 2nd week. The major structure of the gondola was all put together by Nov. 12 or so, but lots of details kept the gondola builders busy. Dana added some new deck extensions to cover over some gaps where the sun can shine in and heat the receiver modules, a nice finishing touch for the deck. A bit of a scare developed about mid-November as the hoist began to creak badly, and we were without it for a week while the problem was debugged. Here is a shot of the installation of the ANITA main instrument and the CSBF SIP, with Mt Erebus in the background.

During this period Garry Simburger got the ANITA battery box into shape and was busy testing the photovoltaic panels, all of which seem in excellent shape. We also had another art contest for the battery box: to manage the thermal control we need its panels to be about 1/2 white and 1/2 black. The winner was Cody Meyer, one of the head cooks, here is his winning design.

Meantime the instrument was quickly up and running after the arrival of the later team around Nov. 7, and Ryan Nichol and Kim Palladino soon had the ground-software system up and running, and instrument calibrations in full swing, with a lot of attention directed at getting the intra- and inter-SURF timing improved. After many days of fussing by Ryan and Andres Romero-Wolf, and futher calibrations after Gary Varner arrived, the timing is now down to the ~20 ps level RMS, much better than the ANITA-1 flight system. Great job guys.

David Saltzberg, Abby Goodhue, and Brian Hill left via Twin Otter on Nov. 22 to go up to Taylor Dome and install the remote GPS-synchronized pulser. They reported soon after arriving that the borehole antenna that we had left there 2 years ago was still intact, and the next day they confirmed that all was working well as planned. This system will be used to provide impulses from under the ice, about 100 m deep, to check efficiency and sensitivity of the payload as we fly over after launch.

One of the amazing things that we often see down here is extreme refraction near the horizon, due to very strong thermal inversion layers close to the ground. Sometimes the effect is to make the nearby White or Black Islands appear to have huge bluffs at their base. Here is a pretty interesting example.

November 26, 2008

The Taylor Dome team arrived back today having completed their installation successfully. This means we now have a remote pulser active in the 100m deep Taylor dome borehole. Once ANITA launches, we should begin to record these pulses very soon after reaching float altitudes, and this will be one of the more important calibrations that we will get during the flight.

We finished all of the cabling and are preparing all of the final system calibrations that will be done: gain and noise figure, impulse response, group delay, and RF absolute power sensitivity. All of these should be done over the next few days. Then we move outside for some calibrations involving the GPS and an external pulser if all goes well.

Weather is a bit unsettled today, looks like snow by tonight or tomorrow.

November 28, 2008

Last night we had about 4″ of snow in McMurdo, and it blew quite hard early this morning, taking visibility down to 25 yards at times, and closing the road out to the Long Duration Balloon base, affectionately known as LDB. Weather has been pretty threatening today but we managed to get out to LDB in the afternoon to complete a calibration sequence we started yesterday, the noise figure, gain, and delay of all of the receiver channels, 72 in all. Here is a shot of Matt Mottram from UC London hard at work in the bowels of the payload, and Christian Miki from Hawaii catching some wireless on the payload deck.

Andres Romero-Wolf also showed some hidden artistic talent by recreating part of a famous M. C. Escher print which uses tesselated white and black lizards, on our battery box, to provide thermal control for one of the panels which was uncommitted. Here is a shot of the work in its current state.

November 29, 2008

Today the weather had a mind of its own, we did manage to get out to the LDB base for the morning, but by lunchtime it was blowing 30-35 kt, with some pretty limited visibility, and Mac Ops was clearly wanting us to call it a day so they would not have to worry about a rescue later on, which would wipe out their Thanksgiving dinner. So after lunch we called it quits and returned to town. We did manage to finish the first part of the major sensitivity calibration, with gain, delay, and noise figure now measured for all of the channels.

Here is a group picture of the team, wearing their Thanksgiving day finest.

November 30, 2008

Today the weather has cleared, with some calm periods followed by snappy south winds, but overall nice conditions. The Thanksgiving meal at McMurdo last night was spectacular as usual–we all got full before we had tried half of the dishes or desserts that we wanted to.

Today the drillers came out and drilled a 25 m borehole for us, out to the east side of the payload building. Here is a shot of David Saltzberg coming back in after checking out the operation, which went quite smoothly.

Nothing like a nice Pisten Bully snow scooter to make it look like driving around Antarctica is fun!

Hey there really are snowflakes down here! (Christian Miki’s photo)

December 4, 2008

Lots of preparations for our “hang test” (also known as a compatibility test) today. Here is a shot of Garry Simburger from Wash. U. testing solar panels in front of the payload hangar, and a nice view of our borehole Scott tent with Erebus puffing in the background:

December 7, 2008: “Hang Test”

Today we finally completed our last required tests to be declared launch ready. The solar panels were installed (with clamp-on protextive covers here) and we sent telemetry through the TDRSS satellites and via our Iridium modem, as well as the Sband Line-of-sight 1 Mbps link. Everything worked well, and we are ready to launch. Now its time to hurry up and wait–for CREAM to launch first, and then for our chance….

December 13, 2008

Today we took some time to test the payload out on the front of our payload bay, hanging from the crane, and we lowered the drop-down antennas to get some signals from the borehole pulser. As we brought ANITA back into the bay, she showed some angelic qualities….

December 20, 2008

We actually tried to launch today, but had to scrub later in the day because of some technical difficulties on the flightline. Anyway, it didn’t stop us from grabbing the possible last photo ops….

December 21, 2008: “LAUNCH!”

We had a picture perfect launch day, no wind, sunny and beautiful. We launched at 10:17 am McMurdo time. As of 20 hrs into the flight, all is working almost flawlessly! On to East Antarctica!

My vanity shot, the ANITA team, and the moment after release.

Here the drop-down antennas have deployed.

Halfway to float….

Here is ANITA at float, 121,000 ft, with a fully inflated balloon –the size of the Rose Bowl (not the playing field, the whole stadium!)