Geoff Sims @ UNSW
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Thursday, 3rd January, 2013

Work begins (Geoff)




We were treated to nice blue skies here today; a welcome change from yesterday's grey overcast conditions. After some snow mobile training and hero shots at the ceremonial South Pole, we began unpacking our crate full of engines, tools, electronics, etc. Here are just a few quick photos, and a timelapse of us unpacking the crate, taken inside a large tent:


And here are the photos:







By the way, the blogs may be a little more sporadic than usual. This is because we do not have internet connectivity 24/7. Instead, the South Pole station relies on decomissioned geostationary satellites, whose orbits have decayed enough such that they are visible from the Pole (typically this is not the case). This results in about 4 hours per day, per satellite, of available internet time. They are now using three satellites, so we have internet approximately half the day. The schedule is made available on the intranet, which is (of course) available 24/7. Here is how it looked shortly before posting this blog:



We do, however, have access to e-mail 24/7, in which we are able to use a USAP specific e-mail address and the Iridium satellite data link, to e-mail both internally and externally whenever we like. We can send attachments too, but with a limit of 70 kb per e-mail.

-- Geoff

 


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g.sims@unsw.edu.au