8 July 2008 Teachers at Summit

Journal

July 8, 2008 – Tuesday -Teachers at Summit

The next few journals might be a little shorter than usual. We are feverishly tearing down equipment in order to have everything packed and ready by Wednesday evening.

Moving Out — Katrine and Christine haul the first of MANY pieces of science equipment out of Sat Camp.

Today we were lucky enough to welcome several teachers and students from the US, Greenland, and Norway! They flew in early this morning and were immediately rushed out to Sat Camp so we could give them a tour of all the research projects. They will stay here for two nights and will leave with us and our equipment on Thursday.

Learning at Sat Camp — The international teachers and students from the Greenland Education Tour listen intently as the scientists explain their experiments

As we were giving tours at Sat Camp we noticed the Hercules had made a few passes on the skiway and was unable to take off! Apparently the snow was a little too "sticky” to allow for takeoff. So, the Hercules came back into the taxi way and the Summit Crew installed JATO’s (Jet Assisted Take Off) on the exterior of the plane. JATO’s are rockets that give the large cargo plane additional speed at takeoff. When they fire the rockets, smoke, snow, and black suet blanket the sky. But, they were finally able to get off the ground on their trip back to Kangerlussuaq.