ARTEMIS 2015 - Robotic Exploration Beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf
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The Beginnings of Field Site Setup

9/15/2015

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By Peter Kimball
Pisten Bully Sun Dog
Justin and Josh disconnect our outhouse from our Pisten Bully out at our candidate field site. (photo: Peter Kimball)
A few of us went our to our first-choice candidate field site today.  We'll need to do some exploring under the ice with Sunfish before we can call it our "for sure" field site.  The plan today was to watch the drillers put in a 48" access hole, position a fish hut over the hole, and then deploy Sunfish.  It was quite cold again today, though, and the drill couldn't be started.  So instead, we accomplished a small chore and dragged our outhouse out to the site.  Our expedition's string of amazing natural phenomena continued today with a beautiful sun dog.

After dropping off the outhouse, we went south of our field site to check on the status of a crack in the ice we saw there during site selection.  It's the tiniest thing on the surface, but it's a bit scary under the snow.  The crack is still small enough to be crossed by our Pisten Bullies, but wouldn't be crossable (at this location) by snow machines.  We'll have to keep an eye on this when we start doing surface tracking of ARTEMIS later in the season.
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Josh, Britney, and I check out a sea ice crack just south of our candidate field site. (photo: Justin Lawrence)
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Britney checks the depth of the crack with a bamboo pole. There's open water under the snow, 38" below the surface. The crack is 32" wide. (photo: Peter Kimball)
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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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