More Questions and What is My Job?

1. Describe a typical work day, are you hard at it for 12 hours straight or periods of busy with relaxed periods.

I am usually up at 5:30 and go to the galley for some oatmeal and toast. When I first arrived I was gobbling up all the bacon, eggs, sausages, pancakes, etc. I soon learned that that won't work for me. So I decided on the oatmeal for most of the week. It is a quick walk to the station where I go over emails and maintenance items for the day. There is a lot of work at the antenna sites so we have been traveling a lot to get this work done before winter sets in. It's fun because of all the good views from these sites. 

After a week I have also decided to not visit the galley for lunch. There is just too much available. The gym is next door so I put some miles in on the treadmill or cycle unless the weather is nice and I can go for a hike. I usually have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. 

I go to dinner around 6. Then it is back to the office to read or watch a DVD. The office is a lot more comfortable than my dorm room. It is usually very cold and windy after hours so not much hiking then. People here generally tend to get where they want to go then stay put. It is actually pretty warm today at 23 degrees with a wind chill at 17. But the wind is blowing 25 knots. That makes it very uncomfortable. The South Pole is closed now for the rest of the winter. They are averaging -54 degrees for the last two weeks.

2.  Where do you work?

The spaceflight tracking station at McMurdo, Antarctica is part of the Near Earth Network  (NEN) of low orbiting or geosynchronous (maintains same position in the sky) satellites. The NASA NEN is a customer driven organization that provides communications services to space assets. The NEN provides telemetry, commanding, and tracking services for orbital missions. McMurdo is in a prime polar location to provide service to polar orbiting spacecraft. Because polar orbiting spacecraft pass over the earth’s poles each orbit this station can provide communications to polar orbiting spacecraft nearly every orbit. There are ten stations in the NEN. NASA operates this station along with Wallops Island, Virginia and White Sands, New Mexico.  The satellite is acquired as it comes up over the horizon. At that point commanding and telemetry downlink will occur. The telemetry will be automatically sent to the customer by way of a Transfer Data and Relay Satellite (TDRS). The station supports about 40 passes a day each lasting about 12 minutes.

NASA McMurdo Ground Station operates with two engineers year round – two in the summer and two in the winter. The system is automated but we are on call with pagers 24/7 for any malfunctions. We generally work 6 days a week 9-10 hours. There is scheduled maintenance that requires rebooting all the systems along with antenna calibration and maintenance.

 

3. Is there a doctor or a nurse for those that winter over?

There is a doctor and medical staff at McMurdo General Hospital.

4. What goes on in the after work hours?  Movie night?  No TV? (I assume all satellites with TV stations are on the Geo-belt and outside your field of view)  How do you get news?  Internet only? How does the internet signals get to you?  Satellite I assume?

We receive about 5 channels here:  the Armed Forces Network, a New Zealand news channel, an Australian network and the BBC. There is also a very slow internet connection. The main communications is through Black Island, a very remote area 25 miles from here. At Black Island there is a satellite dish that provides for this service with a NASA TDRS satellite. All voice, internet, and TV is microwaved to us. Needless to say all this depends on the weather. There have been periods of blackout. Voice goes directly to Denver. So incoming and outgoing calls are a simple 720 area code away. There is also an extensive VHS ad DVD library.
 

The control station.

We traveled up to the 10 meter antenna yesterday for some work. Picture perfect day.

Mt Erebus about 23 miles away. At almost 13,000 feet it is the largest active volcano in the southern hemisphere. The top is a molten lake. There is a wiff of smoke at the top.

The lava lake inside Mt. Erebus

In this picture you can see where the bay ends and the ice shelf begins.

Good view of the ice pier behind the ship. This one is being built with salt water layers that freeze. The last ice pier broke in two from a tsunami caused by the 2010 earthquake in Chile.