Ice-raids, or how stuff gets to Concordia

This is a photo of the IPEV Raid, the ice-convoy that IPEV runs regularly between Dumont d'Urville and Concordia. The convoy takes approximately 10 days to cover the 1100 km that separate these two bases. It carries the hundreds of tons of material and fuel required to run Concordia, and the scientific experiments it supports.

Just over one ton the freight carried by the various Raids of this Antarctic summer is for CASE-IPY: seismometers, acquisition systems, radios, electronics, wooden boxes for station installation, solar panels, masts (for radio antennas and solar panels), and batteries.

The last of our equipment is now on our way to Dumont d'Urville on the second crossing of the Astrolabe (called R1 - counting starts at 0). It should then meet up with the second Raid (called Raid2 - counting starts at 1) at Dumont, and arrive at Concordia by the end of December, just in time for us to unpack it all and start working.