A busy week of charging seismic nodes, plus PASSCAL team bonding.
What is a seismic node, you may ask?? Why do you care?? Excellent questions.
Some context: I work at IRIS/PASSCAL, a facility that loans out seismic instrumentation to different scientists that are funded by the NSF (National Science Foundation). Scientists can request equipment from our facility, as well as people to help with field work. As a Polar Field Engineer, my job is to join field teams in the Arctic and Antarctic. This season, I am deploying to help the TIME team (Thwaites Interdisciplinary Margin Evolution; check out my post from a few days ago for more details about the work we'll be doing). So, I work at PASSCAL, and I am deploying to help the TIME experiment in Antarctica this Nov-Feb.
A relatively new piece of equipment in the world of seismology is the node. A node combines a seismic sensor, battery, and digitizer all in one small, simple to deploy package. However, the battery life on these babies is only ~30 days, so the nodes aren't made for long-term experiments.
Several experiments are using nodes this season, including TIME, as well as GHOST, IceRift, and SPRESSO (yes, scientists have fun with acronyms). So, it is the PASSCAL Polar Team's job to ship down nodes for each experiment and facilitate charging them up in McMurdo before sending them out to the field.
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| Three charging racks of Fairfield nodes. Each node has a large spike on the end so you really have to be careful standing next to the racks. It looks like a medieval torture device. |
We have about 1000 PASSCAL nodes in McMurdo this season and limited space inside, so let me tell you... it has been very busy. We bring a large (3ft by 3ft, 700lb) crate inside, unload bags full of nodes onto shelves and let them warm up, unpack the nodes from the bags and load them onto the charging rack, let them charge over a few hours, put them to sleep, take them off the rack and put them back into bags, label and scan them out of our inventory system, load them back in the large crate, and then take them back outside. Whew.
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| A second type, the SmartSolo nodes, charging in the PASSCAL office. These are also very spiky. |
Oh, and they aren't light. Each bag of 6 nodes is 43lbs (we measured) 💪.
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| A pile of yellow node bags. Six nodes fit per bag. Notice the lithium battery stickers -- the nodes contain lithium batteries and have to be shipped down to McMurdo in accordance with some pretty strict guidelines to keep everyone safe. |
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| Alan (another PASSCAL Polar Field Engineer) has collapsed in the foam packing materials at the end of a very long day. |
The TIME team has spent some, well, time discussing our field plan. If everything goes according to plan, we will deploy an array of 985 nodes across the margin of the Thwaites Glacier.
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| Large poster with the TIME field plan. Warmer colors = ice is moving faster, cooler colors = ice is moving slower. Blue dots are where we will deploy nodes and red dots are where we will set up explosives. |
As of Friday, 4/5 members of the PASSCAL Polar team have made it to Antarctica! Avilash (who I deployed with last season) arrived and Alan and I made him a huge sign 5 minutes before he got here. As Avi tells the story... someone on the bus said there were two crazy people jumping around with a huge piece of cardboard outside and Avi raised his hand and said "yep, that must be for me".
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| Avilash, Alan, and our beautiful sign. Plus Ivan the Terra Bus, my favorite Antarctic vehicle (except for PistenBully 314, of course). |
The four of us celebrated Avi's arrival by wearing matching tie dye on Saturday.
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| Left to right: Avilash, me, Alan, and Suze in front of the nodes. Suze is the Polar Operations and Logistics Manager and the rest of us are lowly Polar Field Engineers. |
The four of us are sharing the PASSCAL office and have spruced it up with some decorations. Avilash (who also got married recently) brought in his wedding photos, and I brought in... laminated pictures of a whiptail lizard and a black rain frog... so basically the same thing... right..?
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| My desk area in the PASSCAL office. The lava lamp and fake flowers/greenery are Suze's addition. |
Also, I have a pager now. McMurdo is stuck several decades in the past, and one way to communicate with people (besides landline phones) is the wonderful pager.
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| View from the Ob Hill Loop trail. |
It is sooo very cold here. The other morning I went out for a run and it was -3F with a -22F windchill... so I ended up running on a treadmill. I despise treadmills so it says a lot that I preferred the gym over being outside. And I am out of "temporary" housing! My new dorm is Hotel California, and my roommate is wonderful! She has been attempting to fly to South Pole for the last week, but her flights keep being delayed due to terrible weather.
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| View of the Transantarctic Mountains. My dorm is the large brown building in the middle of the picture. |
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