Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Expedition planning #2 - A ton of batteries.

Antarctica is a long way away from Europe, so equipment needs to be shipped a long time in advance. Especially heavy equipment that must travel by ship.

Although we ourselves will not be leaving for Antarctica until next December, we have already purchased and sent more than a ton of stuff (literally!):

  • 50 lead batteries - weight: 940kg - volume: 0,42 cubic meters
  • 6 galvanized steel masts + accessories - weight: 90kg - volume: 0.75 cubic meters
The batteries will be used to power our seismic stations during the Antarctic night (we should be able to keep recording for approximately two months after sun-down).

The masts are for radio-transmission of state-of-health information from our stations back to the Concordia base, so we can keep an eye on things.

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Keep up to date with the latest developments at http://sismordia.blogspot.com

2 comments:

Bob Tubbs said...

Hi Alessia,

Sounds like you've got yourself a cool job! Are you going to Concordia for the summer? Astronomers are also very interested in Dome C.

Bob Tubbs

Alessia Maggi said...

Hi Bob,

yes, I'll be going in the summer (Antarctic summer of course).

Astronomers are indeed very interested in Dome C. I don't know the details, but there is a large telescope being assembled there.

Here are some details (mixture of English and French):


Astronomie a Concordia
,

AstroPoles: Astronomy from the Polar Plateaus,

Stella Antarctica: Towards and international astronomical observatory at Dome C in Antarctica.