Lake Bonney Expedition 2009


The second deployment has been successfully completed.

You can learn more about current events from Kristof Richmond at Kristof's blog and from Emma Steger at Emma's blog and from Shilpa Gulati at Shilpa's blog.

 

Mission plan for November 16 called for another ambitious sonde cast run to clean up the southwest quadrant of the lake.

Kristof preps the pH sensor on the sonde before launch.

Vickie locks in on the bot position for the 22nd sonde cast of the day.

SAS engineer Bart Hogan leaves the valley after six weeks on the ice.

Sonde cast progress at the conclusion of the November 16 mission.

Monday
November 16, 2009

We awoke to the sound of tents fluttering madly in 25 knot + winds - katabatics coming down the valley. The temperature rose to 3C (37F). Bill prepared the mission plan this morning, an ambitious 22 sonde casts to mop up the entire southwest quadrant of the lake. While this was underway Vickie pulled the sonde flags from the November 9 and 11 missions and she and Rachel re-labeled them for today's run.


Meanwhile, the strong winds played havoc with our melt hole wind screens, lifting up and tossing heavy ballast ice into the hole that had been piled on the sheets. Vickie and Kristof went to work and re-anchored the ends of the flaps (seen as the yellow colored panels on the four sides of the moon pool access port in previous photos) using ice screws and some clever rigging tricks Vickie had picked up on other expeditions.


Project PI, Peter Doran, arrived on a helo flight at 11am, in time to participate in the team meeting. By 12:33pm the vehicle was underway. It returned at 6:35pm in a textbook mission, acquiring all 22 casts: D5, D8, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9, B3, B4, B5, B6, B7, B8, B9, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, and F6 without incident. The latter station is included in all missions as a time varying measure of lake activity over the season. Total distance traveled underwater today was 2.7 kilometers with an in-water run time of 6 hours. We still had more than 40% power reserves at the conclusion of the mission.


After being with us during the tedious start-up phase for six weeks, SAS chief engineer Bart Hogan began the long return to the US and his family today, hopefully arriving in time for Thanksgiving. Given the substantial changes and improvements made to the hardware and software on ENDURANCE over the past year, Bart's presence on the field team was of enormous benefit. Thanks Bart!

 

John Priscu hands out crepes in the Jamesway.

Shilpa, Emma, Chris, Bart, Kristof, Vickie, and Chris's creations "Frostie Boy" (left) and "Dr. Stone." By the time Chris got to work most of yesterday's snow storm had ablated.

Sunday
November 15, 2009

Most people did not get to bed until 3 or 4 am so it was a welcome sight to find John Priscu up at noon cheerily making crepes for everyone who walked in the door of the Jamesway at East Lake Bonney. Today was an off day. Many people caught up on their blogs ... a luxury since our science days here are excessively long and most people are dog-tired by the time dinner is over. Somehow sitting down to write at 2am after 18 hours on your feet is difficult. A tent and sleeping bag seem more appealing. It was also a chance to look through data from the past several days at a less break-neck pace.


Shilpa, John, and Emma eventually went on a hike up to the ventifact field some 600 meters vertically above camp. Kristof went for a run along shore to the east. Chris built two snowmen (given the rare snow storm of yesterday). Vickie read Memoirs of a Geisha. In training, Bill did 155 pushups. Most watched an "Austin Powers" film following dinner.

 

Blog entries from previous weeks can be found below:

November 8 - 14, 2009

November 1 - 7, 2009

October 6 - 31, 2009

 

Personnel:

Dr. Peter Doran is the Principal Investigator for the Endurance project. He has been studying the lakes in the Antarctic Dry Valleys for 15 years and is a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Dr. Bill Stone is a Co-Investigator for Endurance. He is also the president and CEO of Stone Aerospace, the engineering company that designed and built the Endurance vehicle.

Dr. John Priscu is a Co-Investigator from the University of Montana. He has been studying the lakes in the Antarctic Dry Valleys for over 20 years.

Bart Hogan is a mechanical engineer for Stone Aerospace.

Dr. Kristof Richmond is a programmer for Stone Aerospace, focusing on navigation.

Shilpa Gulati is a programmer for Stone Aerospace, focusing on the system executive and machine vision. She is also a PhD student at University of Texas, Austin.

Chris Flesher is the vehicle manager, programmer, and electronics technician for Stone Aerospace. He is a Masters student at UT Austin.

Rachel Middleton Price is an electronics technician for Stone Aerospace.

Vickie Siegel is chief vehicle technician and logistics manager for Stone Aerospace.

Maciek Obryk is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Emma Steger is the Lake Bonney camp manager.