[meteorite-list] Ice Diary 8: Where No One Has Gone Before

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:10:07 2004
Message-ID: <200304112122.OAA26831_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=425&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Ice Diary 8: Where No One Has Gone Before
Astrobiology Magazine
April 11, 2003

Summary: The Ice Diary series explores the adventures
of a dedicated group of meteor hunters. The National
Science Foundation, NASA and the Smithsonian collect
and curate extraterrestrial samples scoured from the
South Pole. The diary entries provide a personal tour of a
recent expedition, with all the immediacy of being there.


Ice Diary 8
Where No One Has Gone Before
28 December, 2002

No day of meteorite collecting in Antarctica is routine, but a certain regularity has set
in. Nancy says that this usually happens around this time -- when you've been
searching for a little over three weeks and still have almost three to go. I've noticed
people in our group have questions about the upcoming pull-out, and I must admit
that some of my thoughts have turned to my New Zealand itinerary and what I'm
going to do first when I get back to work at the high school. I think all of us are
looking forward to showers and sleeping indoors again.

Today started like most. We woke at 7:00 a.m., but the tent was about 10 degrees
colder than normal. I heard the wind outside and was not as motivated as I could
have been. We went back to Quiche Moraine, thinking that we would finish it up, but
instead we recovered another 16 meteorites, and some don't fit the pattern we
thought we'd established. It looks like we still have some of Quiche leftover.

At 11:00, Nancy and Jamie led us back to the "Mouthy Ice," a large blue ice field on
the plateau above us that is shaped on the satellite photo like a giant mouth. They
try to mix up the agenda every day so that we don't get bored searching the same
moraine or ice field day after day. About the time we got up there, the wind died and
the temperatures began to climb. We systematically searched for a couple of hours,
but Scott was the only one who found a meteorite.

Today we seemed to get several breaks during the time we were setting up each search
sweep. Many of us would lay back on our Ski-doos and stare at the sky. When all the
Ski-doos are shut off, it's perfectly
quiet and peaceful. The sky is very blue here, like the sky in Colorado, and for the
same reason: elevation. Occasionally we see contrails left by the LC-130s going
between the South Pole and McMurdo. The contrails curve to match the curvature of
the Earth. The poles are the only places that this phenomenon is visible. Another
phenomenon we see frequently are sundogs, rainbow colored circles around the sun
caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.

The ice was hard on the Ski-doos. At one point, two of them had broken bogey
wheels and another was having engine trouble. Bogey wheels act as the suspension
for the snowmobiles and are easily replaced. I usually have a couple of spares under
the seat of my Ski-doo.

We did most of the repairs on a patch of blue ice that was on the outskirts of our
search area. Most blue ice is rippled and rough, but this looked like a frozen pond. If
we had skates, we could have started a hockey game. We only found one meteorite
here, but the area was beautiful - a large natural amphitheater surrounded by cliffs of
a dark rock called the Ferrar dolerite. This is an igneous rock that formed 180 million
years ago, when Antarctica separated from the Gondwanaland supercontinent.

The cliffs are impressive, standing over 500 feet tall and capped with pure white
snow on top. At some angles, they almost looked like giant ice cream cones. We
drove up on a moraine adjacent to these cliffs and searched the wind scoops for
meteorites. Scott pointed out that since this place hadn't been searched by an earlier
ANSMET team, we could very likely be the first people here. Danny commented that
we were going "Where no man has gone before..." It's exciting to think that your
footsteps may be the first in an area, or that you may be the first person to lay eyes
on a particular rock.

We searched one more wind scoop on the way back and challenged each other to see
who could climb the furthest up the steep ice face. Inside the wind scoop, the ice
looks like a five-story ocean wave that froze right before it crashed. Scott and
Danny cut footholds in the ice, and we climbed up and slid on our backs all the way
down to a snowy landing at the bottom. The more complex the mind, the greater the
need for play!


29 December, 2002

The word "sublime" is overused, but it applies to a region we passed through on our
way to systematically search a large portion of blue ice. The area was filled with
pinnacles that looked like they were created artificially for a museum display on
Antarctica. We also saw a Fata Morgana, an optical illusion produced from a
temperature inversion. As two layers of air meet, they produce an illusion that looks
like a mountain or cliff on the horizon. Sailors used to see these and thought they
were seeing storm clouds. These are often seen on the Antarctic coast and make
large icebergs look taller than they really are.

After a pleasant morning searching at Harvaine Moraine, the bottom dropped out
of the thermometer. By the time we were having lunch, the temperature
was +3F and the wind was picking up. This afternoon was one of the coldest I've felt
since we began searching. Not even my toe and hand warmers could keep up.

We dropped down into a remarkably smooth area on the western side of the Mouthy
Ice, just west of Jacob's Nunatak. We found over 30 meteorites there, adding to the
eight we found at the moraine this morning. It seemed like the people on either side
of me were finding all the meteorites and I was finding none. My luck changed in the
last hour of the day, when I found three. We all go in streaks, good and bad.

It's funny, but we can always recognize the others on the Ski-doos at a glance, even
though we're all wearing just about the same thing. Nancy and Jamie wear blue
jackets so they are instantly recognizable. Linda is the shortest and wears bear paw
mittens. Dante and Danny look a lot alike because they both have dark beards, and
they usually wear windbreakers instead of their parkas. Danny, however, wears a
facemask and goggles, while Dante has sunglasses that make him look like a rock
star. Carl has become a superhero we call "Blueman" because he wears a blue
balaclava and goggles that cover up all of his facial features. Scott is his sidekick and
has occasionally worn a blue balaclava as well. I don't know how the others know
it's me. It might be my John Denver mirrored glacier glasses.

Dr. Cady Coleman, an astronaut with the Rekki team, arranged a conference call with
the International Space Station last night. The entire Beardmore team filled our tent
and we took turns asking questions of the astronauts on board. Our satellite phones
were linked with Mission Control in Houston, who then patched us in to the Space
Station. It was actually easier to understand the astronauts than the Rekki team
over the phone. The highlight of the evening was when Scott talked in Russian with
the Russian cosmonaut on board.


30 December, 2002

Last night after we returned from searching, the winds died down and the
temperature rose. It was a very pleasant night, but then the winds picked up again
around 6:00 AM. Instead of going to the "Lower Lip of the Mouthy Ice," as Dante
calls it, we decided we would be warmer doing some moraine searching.

We headed back to Harvaine Moraine and finished it off within a couple of hours. We
only found two meteorites, but now we've collected over 360 this season. We
started to search That" Moraine, when the conditions had worsened -- the
temperature was just above 0F and the wind was gusting up to 15 knots. That gave
us a wind chill of about -33F. The wind rushing through my parka was so loud that I
had a hard time hearing if anyone needed help. At that point we decided to call it a
day.

We are getting further into the Antarctic summer and it's interesting to see the
changes that take place in both the natural environment and in the operations of the
US Antarctic Program. The greatest change of all is happening at McMurdo. They are
having some bad weather today, but their temperatures are rising and the sea ice
that surrounds Ross Island is thinning.

McMurdo sits right on the boundary between the annual sea ice and the
permanent ice of the Ross Ice Shelf. In warmer years, the sea ice melts
all the way back to McMurdo. The ice is now too thin to maintain the ice
runway, so all the buildings have been moved and the operations and
flights now take place out of Willie Field, an ice runway located on the
permanent ice a few miles from McMurdo on the other side of Scott
Base.

The thinning ice at McMurdo makes it possible for an icebreaker to come
in. This icebreaker not only brings supplies, but also takes out all the
trash produced by the US Antarctic Program. The icebreaker creates
leads in the ice, and Minke and Orca whales often follow these to find
fresh nutrients. Orcas often come close to McMurdo looking for
penguins and new seal pups, since this is the time of year that Weddell
seals wean their pups and start pushing them into the water. "Just
when you thought it was safe to go into the water..."

A major misconception about Antarctica is that there is wildlife all
over the continent. Actually, the coast is the only place where wildlife can live. There
is almost no liquid water in the interior, and the conditions are too harsh. It's a little
strange sometimes, knowing that there are no plants or animals around here. I half
expect to hear birds in the morning like when I'm camping back home. Or I expect
squirrels to pick up any chips or peanuts that I drop at lunch. But those food scraps
will remain there forever if I don't pick them up. (I was asked frequently before I left
if I was worried about polar bears. I am not. The closest wild polar bear lives about
14,000 miles away, near the North Pole.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Since 1976, the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program
(ANSMET), funded by the Office of Polar Programs of the
National Science Foundation, has recovered more than 10,000
specimens from meteorite stranding surfaces along the
Transantarctic Mountains. Dr. Ralph Harvey and John Schutt are
members of each field party, serving as ANSMET continues to be
one of the few Antarctic research projects that invites graduate
students and senior researchers from other institutions to participate in our field
work on a volunteer basis--including the Teacher Experiencing Antarctica (TEA)
program. As a multi-agency collaboration, the NSF supports field operations, NASA
supports storage curation, distribution and notification of recovered samples, and the
Smithsonian provides long term curation facilities for the collection and assist in
sample characterization.

In this multi-part Ice Diary series, all commentary is attributed to Andy Caldwell
unless otherwise noted, and reprinted by permission as part of his participation in
the TEA program.
Received on Fri 11 Apr 2003 05:22:03 PM PDT