Field Trip to SPICE Core

 We went on a field trip today over to the SPICE Core (South Pole ICE Core) drilling site.

 This is where the cores are extracted. The cores will be flown back to Colorado to be analyzed for CO2 concentrations, other trace atmospheric gasses and many many other experiments to validate other drill site findings.

 This is the drill. The core stays in the center and there is a casing around the outside that collects all the ice chips. RIght now they are dry drilling, just with gravity, once they get to more solid ice and much deeper they will have to switch to wet drilling.

This is the whole drill camp. It has a changing room, warming shack with tea and snacks and meeting table and the cold drill tent. The drill tent is kept at around -20 F all the time. The whole camp is about 3 km from the station across the skiway.

 Riding in the sled behind the snow mobile is fun until everything touching the sled gets really cold and the wind blows the exhaust in your face.

 One of the telescopes was getting a new ground shield today. You can see the crane moving the shield.

 SPT (South Pole Telescope) was pointed straight at us on the roof while we watched the shield operation.

 Inside the old ground shield.

This is highest the sun will ever be at the south pole. The worlds longest sunset started on Sunday!