I exited the station at Destination Zulu and was immediately blasted by a gust of cold air. I pulled my hood over my beanie and carefully navigated down the flight of stairs to the hard packed snow. It was a short walk over to the drilling station, but the cold air and high altitude made the trek feel much farther than it actually was. I paused to catch my breath then made my way over to James Roth, one of the engineers on the ARA drill team.

    Drill Train
    Terry Benson stands on a ladder at the front end of the drill train.

    He quickly gave me a tour of the drill train and showed me around the complex workings of the 75 foot long monstrosity. The drill was used during an ARA deployment in 2012-13 but lack of funding caused the project to be put on hold. The drill was used again in a contract mission to drill into the Rod Well at the station in 2013-14. The drill team is currently in the process of unfreezing all of the working parts of the drill and replacing the drill hose and drill head.

    There are two different drill heads that will be used in the two different types of ice. The deep ice has been compacted by gravity and is pure ice without any air holes. This ice can be drilled through by using hot water pumped into the hole and a second hose to pump out the cold water from the melted ice. The top layer is called the firn. This is snow that has not been compacted completely and it is very porous in nature. The same procedure cannot be used because too much hot water would be lost through the pores in the ice. So the drill team has designed a new drill head, affectionately known as "carrot". This drill head can heat up the firn and bore a neat hole all the way to the more compact ice. This is modeled after the IceCube drill. At this time the drill heads will be swapped and the hot water process will take place. This is the first time that either of these new drill heads will be tested in the field and the team is eagerly awaiting the chance to try it out.

    "Carrot"
    "Carrot", the drill head used for the firn.

    The drill team was also delayed in their start date due to storms in McMurdo and are now behind their projected schedule. The team works long hours: 7-12, 1-6, and sometimes goes back in the evening to work even longer. Their tasks are very arduous as they spend much of their time outside maintaining the drill in the cold and harsh elements of the South Pole. Their job is not a glamorous one, but is essential for the deployment of the ARA sensors in the ice. Some of the scientists from the ARA project are now working with the drill team because data analysis cannot happen until the drill is up and running. It is amazing to watch scientists and engineers working together so collaboratively.

    The engineers that are working on this project are some of the most intelligent problem solvers on the planet. They are working with challenging machinery that has frozen for several winters and they don’t have a Home Depot that they can go to if a part is missing. I am constantly impressed with the way that they see problems and look for solutions. The communication is essential to make sure that everyone is on the same page before moving on to the next problem. This is one of the most important aspects of polar science: communicating problems effectively and looking for solutions to every problem.

    Date
    Weather Summary
    Clear skies
    Temperature
    -25F
    Wind Chill
    -48F

    Comments

    Garret D.

    Miss Anderson,I'm Garret from Mr. Penn's class. We are watching your mission. My class has some question and I get to be the one who gets to write to you. How many holes will you drill? We had a joke that your job was "Boring" ha ha. How long will it take to drill all of your holes? Will sensors be put in the holes like the Icecube project? Is there a place for you to get warm on the dirlling sight? What is your job on the sight? Thank you, Garret

    Dahlia

    Hello, Ms. Lesley! Your work with the drill team seems really interesting - and cold! It's still really warm in Chula Vista, so it's hard for us to imagine just how cold it is in the South Pole. Here are our questions:
    1. Are you working with the ARA drill team the whole time you're there?
    2. How many people are working in the team?
    3. What has been your best experience so far?
    4. How do you get hot water for the drilling?

    And, lastly, we read about how you've been exercising at the station, so how much do you lift?

    - Morning Pod

    Aaron (Morning Pod)

    Hey Ms. Lesley, Hope you're having fun in the South Pole!
    Here are our questions for you today:

    1. How heavy are the power tools?
    2. What is the 'carrot drill' made out of?
    3. Is it hard to work in high altitude?
    4. How far away can you feel the drill?
    5. Are engineers scientists?
    6. Is drilling fun?
    7. What are some of examples of problem solving that you saw?
    8. Have you eaten any of the snow?

    Hope to hear from you soon!

    Michael Penn

    Lesley, I know that there are 37 stations proposed to be installed in the array. You mentioned that the project is behind schedule and that the equipment has not been used for several years. How many holes have been drilled so far and how many are expected to be drilled this year?Mike in Pittsburgh

    Lesley Anderson

    Hi Mike, thanks for your questions! This year we are hoping to deploy at least two stations, possibly a third if there is enough time. There will be six instrument strings at each of the stations. We began drilling our first hole today! It was very exciting!

    Lesley Anderson

    Hi Garret, thanks for the great questions! Yes, we are doing a lot of "boring" work down here :) We are aiming to drill 2-3 stations this season with 6 instrument strings at each of the stations. There is a small site called the MECC where we can get warm while we are working. This is also a good place for us to work on some of the parts that are not attached to the drill train itself. So far I have helped with a number of jobs at the drill train, everything from soldering to splicing electrical wires, to trouble shooting broken switches, engineering ways for sensors to detect temperature of glycol, to shoveling snow! Every day is different, and it has been amazing to get to work on many different aspects of the drill.

    Lesley Anderson

    Hi morning pod!
    I am working with the ARA and IceCube teams this season, but ARA drilling was the first step that needed to happen before we can deploy the strings with sensors. Starting this week I will be helping out the ARA deployment team and also checking in to help the drillers periodically. On Sunday I helped IceCube lay lines in trenches for a scintillator deployment. I'll be posting a journal about that project soon. There are 5 drillers and about 14 ARA and IceCube folks here right now, including our two winterovers (who will be here for 14 months). My favorite thing so far was riding the snowmobile to work and playing golf at the the South Pole marker. We get hot water from a tank. We use generators to heat up the water in a tank that we use for drilling. I can lift at least one shovel worth of snow ;)

    Miss you all, good luck with your PoLs!

    Lesley Anderson

    Good morning Aaron, did you switch pods? :)
    The power tools we use are exactly like ones you might see at home. We have a full working shop and we use all the same types of tools out here. The only challenge is the cold temperature - trying to use a drill and touching metal screws can really make it cold on your hands, especially when you need to take your gloves off briefly for some fine tuned work. The carrot has a lot of different mechanical components to it, but the orange wire that is running around the outside is copper. It is extremely difficult to work at high altitude. I still get winded walking up the stairs. It takes almost twice as long to complete tasks that require physical labor because you run out of oxygen so quickly. I shoveled snow today and had to stop at least 4 times just to catch my breath. Today was the first day that a hole was drilled and I had to return to the station for a training, so I don't know how far away you can feel the drill. So far we have just been doing maintenance to set the drill up and that has been a lot of fun learning about electronics and mechanics. Sometimes scientists can be engineers and the other way around, but often they will go to school for one or the other and then specialize in that field. The most productive teams I've seen are those that include both scientists and engineers that understand the science and engineering work of their counterparts. We had a challenge the other day with a circuit that didn't work properly. This was for the emergency stop on the drill, so a pretty important part. We ended up testing the voltage for each of the independent cables in a linear system, starting with the first cable that we knew worked. This way we were able to systematically determine which of the lines was working and which we would need to replace. Funny you should mention eating snow. We actually don't have a lot of powder snow here like you might be used to if you've ever been skiing. It's mostly hard compact ice here. But we do have a group of scientists that brings in clean ice from the Clean Air Sector outside of the South Pole station weekly. This is arguably the cleanest ice in the world. We used the ice in our sodas to keep our drinks cool...and boy was it good ice!

    Good luck on PoL's this week!!