From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #43

Hi folks,

 Sorry for the late report, but we had no internet all day yesterday (planned outage). There isn't too much new. Both SANAE and Halley are waiting for surface weather to improve. SANAE has a possible launch opportunity Friday. Halley has a possible opportunity Sunday. If neither of these days are favorable, we may end up not launching since we are leaving soon and have to start packing!

Robyn, 

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update # 42

No launches again today due to high surface winds. Payload 2A was terminated at 1730 UT.  For those of you who haven't seen it, here's a link to an article about BARREL on the NASA website. There is also a video that Alexa put together. I can't view it myself but have heard it's great!

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-funded-science-balloons-launch-in-antarctica/

Also, some of you have been asking about our travel plans. Our SANAE team leaves around February 9th. They'll fly to Novo and then on to Cape Town from there. The Halley team will board the ship somewhere between February 17 - 20 and will sail to the Falkland Islands. We expect to depart from the Falklands on March 1st to return via South America. As such, the last possible launch date for the SANAE team is February 9th and the Halley team a few days later (we have to have our cargo on the line by February 15th at the latest). Although we've now launched 20 balloons, we'd very much like to replace the two that came down shortly after launch. So, each team hopes to be able to launch one more before departing. So far, surface conditions do not look great for the next few days. We have a possible launch opportunity from both stations tomorrow.


Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #41

Hi all, 

No launches today due to high surface winds. Payload 2L was terminated at 0810 UT after 29 days of flight! It landed at 68.41S  96.74W.  We also lost contact with Payload 2F. We are continuing to try to contact it. We don't expect any launches Tuesday from either station. We have a possible launch opportunity from Halley Wednesday.

Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #40

Payload 2Q was launched from Halley at 1432 UT today. We currently have 8 payloads up. We don't expect any launches from either station tomorrow.

Robyn. 

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #38

As expected, the winds were high today so there were no launches. SANAE expects a possible launch opportunity tomorrow afternoon. Halley may have an opportunity Sunday.
Happy Chinese New Year!

Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #37

It was a beautiful and successful day today! Payload 2P was launched by the Halley team at 1125 UT. Payload 2E was then launched by the SANAE team at 1600 UT. Both are looking good so far. Payload 2L has also come back to lower latitudes and is still kicking after 24 days. The winds are supposed to pick up at Halley tomorrow so we don't expect a launch from here until early next week.

Robyn

From the Ice: What working in Antarctica is really like...

Day after day, the sky has been white here lately. When the rest of your surroundings are also white, it can be a bit dull and dreary. Today, the sun came out finally, and we made the most of it! The clouds rolled in by the time we took the picture but it was quite lovely. With no wind, -7C doesn't feel too bad!

Robyn

On another note, both Halley and SANAE launched balloons today! This makes 16 launches, not bad. 

From the Ice: BARREL Status update # 36

Hi Folks,

 No launches again today. The surface winds were just a bit too high at both launch sites. The forecast for tomorrow looks very good so we expect to launch in the morning from Halley and possibly in the afternoon from SANAE. Payload 2D was terminated at 0340 UT today. It landed at 72.17S, 12.78W. The sun has become a bit more active with a bunch of M-class flares over the past day and a chance for a bigger flare. The active region we had at the start of the month has come back around to "our" side of the sun, so we hope to see things picking up for the end of our campaign.

Cheers

Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #35

The SANAE team launched Payload 2D at 1552 UT today. We now have 5 payloads up. Today was a beautiful day at Halley also - the first sun we've seen in a while! Because we just launched yesterday, we decided to wait another day before launching again. This will also give the crew here time to groom our launch pad. We got quite a lot of snow over the last week so setting up for launch yesterday was a little challenging. The snow was nearly up to my knees in places and quite dense. Our "runners" did a great job launching the payload given the conditions.  We expect good conditions again Tuesday and Wednesday so expect to launch on one of those days. Meanwhile, we completed the Payload 2P Comprehensive Performance Test, and it is now flight-ready. We also got Payload 2Q out of storage an onto the bench for testing. 

Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #34

Hi all,
  This is a status report for Sunday. Our internet was down most of the day so I'm writing it Monday morning! We finally had some decent weather at Halley and launched Payload 2O at 1740 UT.  SANAE has a possible launch opportunity today. Geomagnetic activity has picked up a tad and we expect that to continue through today and tomorrow. 

Robyn

For the Mission Monitors

Yesterday we had a mid campaign Science Meeting for our mission monitors. They are the BARREL army of undergrads who tirelessly watch over our payloads once they are launched. The rest of us also try to help out but have out hands full either on the ice launching the balloons, up here coordinating with the different satellite and science teams, or trying to get other science done. The mission monitors watch the payload, checking in every 30 minutes and letting us know if anything looks amiss. We really couldn't do the campaign without their help.

We had a talk from David Smith and myself, but then they also got both Brett and Robyn to call in! It really was a telecom from around the world.

Some highlights from the meeting. I made a movie (yes another one... I'll stop playing with iMovie but it's just so much fun and cool and easy!).

Also, Here's a photo of what the Halley station looks like. I don't have a photo of the SANAE station, but perhaps Brett will be able to send me one to post. 

It really was a great time and I hope the mission monitors enjoyed it as much as we did! 

Thanks again to our BARREL army of Mission Monitors! 

From an E-mail exchange between the BARREL team...

You may have noticed that we haven't launched a balloon in a while. This is because both stations have been experiencing high ground winds. If we were to try to launch, besides the teams getting frost bite, the balloons would likely tear and we wouldn't have a successful launch. Thus it's much better to wait it out and hope for calm days. That said I think both the SANAE and Halley teams are getting a bit of cabin fever...

Last Thursday after trying to launch from both stations we got this e-mail from Robyn

Hi all,SANAE winds are also just not cooperating and have been getting worse. So, both Halley and SANAE are standing down for today. SANAE has a possible opportunity tomorrow. Halley is unlikely to have an opportunity tomorrow. Start doing the low-wind dance for us!

The SANAE team responded with this...

FYI, for those who didn’t know, the low wind dance looks like this.  It mostly just involves jumping up and down a lot.  No music required, in fact, Antarctic Silence is the soundtrack of choice!  Of Montreal’s song "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” comes in a close 2nd.
Cheers,
Brett

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #33

Hi all,
  We've still be experiencing 20 knot winds on the ground at Halley and not great conditions at SANAE either. The weather is predicted to improve at Halley through the evening and into tomorrow so we are hoping for a launch opportunity Sunday. We lost contact with Payload 2C this morning at 7:46:33 UTC.  The telemetry throughput for this payload has been lower on average than the others (~85%) so we suspect a modem issue may be responsible. The payload will terminate itself after 38 hours without contact but we will continue to attempt contact until that point. On a more positive note, this is the first hardware problem we've had this year and we have now satisfied our comprehensive success criteria in terms of the number of hours of observations. The attached plot shows a histogram of the total number of hours of observation at various L-values. To date, we have acquired 1380 hours of observations between L=3-7 (based on T89 field model with Kp=2).

Happy Burn's Night!

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #32

The surface winds didn't cooperate for a launch today at either Halley or SANAE. SANAE may have an opportunity tomorrow. It looks like the weather will start to improve at Halley over the weekend, and we can't wait! The sky has been white for days which isn't very nice when everything else around is white as well! It's a good time for bad weather, though, as solar and geomagnetic activity have been pretty low. There are now 10 numbered sunspots on the sun, so some possibility that the activity will be increasing soon.
Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #31

Payload 2X was terminated at 0800 UT. It landed on the plateau at 83.11S 67.96 E. Both Halley and SANAE have possible launch opportunities on Thursday.

Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #30

Hi all, 

Sunday (January 19) Payload 2Y was cut down at 1800 UTC after 8 days of flight. The last coordinates were  71.55S 135.11W.  Today, the SANAE team launched payload 2C at 1616 UT in perfect conditions.  We have 5 payloads up in the air and are expecting some possible geomagnetic activity on Jan. 22nd! The weather at Halley is forecast to be pretty bad for the next few days. We might get some real snow! I'll send another update on the weather tomorrow- hoping the forecast is wrong.


Robyn

P.S. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

From the Ice: The recovery of payload 2Z

Hi all, 

This morning (19 Jan) I went out and retrieved 2Z with a mountaineering expert, Roger.  The payload was 31km SW of SANAE base, and had been transmitting data as normal ever since it crash landed after it’s untimely return from 38km altitude.  We traveled to the payload via helicopter!  When we arrived at the payload, the chopper lightly touched down about 30meters from the payload.  We were concerned about crevasses, which due to the fresh snowfall in the past week, would have been nearly impossible to see.  I belayed Roger, seen in the photo, who recovered just the payload.  Portions of the balloon and parachute are visible to the right of the payload and buried in snow, but it was too dangerous to recover the parachute or balloon.  As the chopper took off again, Nick could see the GPS location of the payload rise, as he watched the ground station data back at base!  The mission went smoothly and we now have 2Z back in the lab.  The solar panels, even, show no signs of damage, even after a week of poor weather in Antarctica.  2Z is now ready to be tested, returned to the US for refurbishment, and eventually re-launched under another, hopefully more long-lived balloon.

Cheers,

Brett Anderson

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #29

Hi all,

Payload 2N was launched at 1248 UT. It reached float altitude but was apparently a leaker and had to be terminated at 0220 UT. The payload landed at  76S 32.68W. Thanks to the folks in CA for keeping an eye on it while we were sleeping! SANAE  had a scheduled power outage on station for some work on the generators  so thanks also to UCSC for taking over the payload monitoring early. Halley had an unscheduled power outage later in the day when one of the generators imploded. Luckily there are four generators on station, so we were not without power for long. No launch planned from Halley Sunday.  SANAE has a possible launch opportunity.

Robyn

From the Ice: BARREL Status Update #28

Payload 2T was terminated this morning at 0726 UT after a 22 day flight and circumnavigating the globe. It landed at 77.96S, 56.56W.  SANAE also launched Payload 2B at 1924 UT.  The Halley forecast still looks like we might have a launch opportunity Saturday morning. Stay tuned!

Robyn

From the ice: BARREL Status update #27

Hi all, a quick status update today,

SANAE launched Payload 2A today at 1327 UT. It reached float altitude about 2 hours later and so far is looking good.  They may have another opportunity tomorrow. It's been too windy at Halley for a launch but we're expecting Saturday to be better.  

Robyn