McMurdo Ground Station & LiDAR!

Last week I had a tour of the McMurdo Ground Station control room and satellite receiver. A little smaller than ISS mission control, but was fun to see their displays, procedure books, and voice loops on their console.


The front door reminds me of the sign on the ISS Mission Control door.





Oh to only have one procedure book on console!


Then we drove up the hill to Arrival Heights and went into the dome that surrounds the satellite receiver. The ground station tracks the NASA Joint Polar System Satellite (JPSS).



There’s a great view from the hill, but it was the coldest and windiest place I’ve been.


Here’s a view of the receiver later that day from a distance.


Later that day we also toured a lab on the top of the hill that Dr. Chu from UC Boulder runs that is doing LiDAR work. Her PhD students were keen to give us a tour.

Dr, Chu is really fond of Marc and me. She really enjoyed my ISS lecture. Marc remembers Dr. Chi’s science lecture from 8 years ago, one of the reasons he applied and got the job here as McMurdo Summer Station Manager.



Lasers! The explanation is best left to Dr. Chu….

http://cires1.colorado.edu/science/groups/chu/


The University of Colorado Na Doppler and Fe Boltzmann lidars are shooting laser beams to the sky for probing the Antarctic atmosphere and space.

You can see the laser stream heading up to the roof.



For some reason there’s an escape hatch out the side of the lab….probably if the front door gets snowed in.



From the roof of the laboratory, the views are stunning.



Dr. Chu sent me this amazing picture of the laser at work.




Comments

  1. Bill O'HaraOctober 11, 2022 at 7:26 AM

    Hi Carla. Thanks for sharing your ongoing McMurdo trip! I left you a question about the base on messenger if you get a chance to check it.
    Thanks!
    Bill

    ReplyDelete

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