ARTEMIS 2015 - Robotic Exploration Beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf
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Scouting the Ice Shelf

10/16/2015

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​By Peter Kimball
USAP Snowmobiles on Ice Shelf
Alasdair and Josh wait for the rest of us to return to our snowmobiles for the trip back to our field site. (photo: Peter Kimball)
Once ARTEMIS science operations begin, we will need to send personnel over the surface with tracking equipment to obtain GPS measurements of the robot's position.  Britney, Justin, Josh, and I headed out on snowmobiles with Alasdair (a USAP sea ice safety expert) to scout the area of the ice shelf where surface travel will be the most difficult.  We rode approximately due West from our field site.

What we learned was encouraging.  The shelf ice was very smooth for nearly 8 km.  After a very sudden transition, the ice beyond that point is very rough with wind ablation features.  Those features are dense enough, and high enough that snowmobile travel will be very slow, and Pisten Bully travel will be impossible beyond that transition.  the encouraging bit is that the first 8 km are so smooth - smooth enough to travel in a Pisten Bully.  The range of ARTEMIS is 10 km, so we'll have fairly easy surface tracking, even to the worst-case West for most of the vehicle range.

The wind was out of the East, so when we turned around to travel back to the site, we were heading straight upwind, and our comfort level plummeted.  Tuesday was very cold.  Wind speeds were high and forecasted to continue increasing.  We would have liked to scout along more directions from camp, but we made the call that the cold and wind made it too dangerous for us to stay out.  I also would have liked to take more photos out there, but the thermal cost of going down to only two glove layers for photography was quite high, so I only took a few.

We'll do more scouting on a warmer, calmer day, but learning what we learned Tuesday has taken some pressure off and made us feel fairly confident about our surface operations.
1 Comment
Maria
10/16/2015 04:42:22 am

Thanks Peter for your report and the photos. Appreciate your effort in spite of the antarctic cold and wind. Sorry about your frost nip. Take good care.

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    ARTEMIS is part of the SIMPLE project, supported by NASA ASTEP.

    About the Blog

    This is the personal blog of Peter Kimball and Evan Clark, following our deployment with the ARTEMIS long-range underwater robotic vehicle to explore beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

    Authors

    Peter Kimball
    Peter Kimball is an aerospace engineer and field roboticist on the Stone Aerospace ARTEMIS project.
    Evan Clark
    Evan Clark is a computer scientist and field roboticist on the Stone Aerospace ARTEMIS project.
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    Kristof Richmond is a mechanical engineer and field roboticist on the Stone Aerospace ARTEMIS project.

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