New tracks in the snow

The neutrino telescope IceCube is making its first tracks in the South Pole’s snow, reports Jeff Cherwinka, an engineer with the Antarctic Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Institute at UW–Madison.

The giant hose reel for an enhanced hot water drill has been assembled at the South Pole, a necessary tool for installing IceCube in Antarctic ice.

“It was a very good start, with the assembly taking considerably less time than initially forecast,” Cherwinka says. “The staff at the Pole did a very good job of supporting our team.”

Not only was it complicated to assemble the huge hose reel, but like all research in Antarctica, the equipment took a long time to get there.

The IceCube equipment, which takes up half a city block when put together, was taken from Wisconsin in December via two flatbed trailer trucks to California, explains IceCube Logistics Manager Terry Hannaford of Triad Project Management, contractors for some IceCube-related tasks. The equipment went via ship to Christchurch, New Zealand, where it was flown on a C-141 cargo plane to the U.S. research base in McMurdo. From there, all the equipment was flown on an LC-130, a ski-equipped cargo plane, to the South Pole.

IceCube is a multinational, multiorganizational effort funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered in UW–Madison’s Antarctic Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Institute. Ice Coring and Drilling Services provides engineering support, including drilling holes more than a kilometer deep for neutrino detectors. See http://www.news.wisc.edu/8941.html for a picture.