Just Another Day...

Well, I've kind of gotten into a daily routine down here and it varies very little from day to day (so much so that it is actually hard to remember what day of the week it is). I am purposely trying not to do everything there is to do down her all at the beginning so I will still have new and exciting things to do the remainder of the time I am down here. There are still hikes to do, there are several site-seeing tours that you can do and there are other things as well. So I don't really have much exciting to talk about.

.

Everything at work is progressing along according to schedule. We have three balloons to launch this year, and right now it doesn't look like we will launch the first until the second week of December at the earliest. The payloads are still being assembled and there are a lot of tests that have to be done before they are considered ready to fly. Hopefully they will be ready around the first of December and then it is just a matter of waiting for the weather to cooperate. It is still looking like it will be around the first of the year before I get to come home.

Here are just a few random pictures that I have taken...

Picture of the sea ice from the plane on the flight to Antarctica. Nothing spectacular, I just thought the pattern in the ice was really neat.

C-17 that I flew from New Zealand to Antarctica on

This is "Ivan the Terra Bus". This is how I get to work every morning. It is definitely not designed for speed and agility.

Very cool lenticular clouds over Ross Island near work

This is the solar panel array of one of our payloads. This is just the beginning of this payload, and when done it will weigh nearly 6000lbs and will barely fit out of the doors of that building.

This is the Boss, our launch vehicle in Antarctica