Jon and Minako and the Kiwi Herc.

When I got up this morning I found I had received the following text:

Yes, that is a text from McMurdo, sent by Minako!   We had heard it was now possible to send and receive a few texts per day from McMurdo (just text, no photos),  but it didn’t seem real to me before that text arrived. Consider my mind boggled.   About a decade ago I was a reviewer on a plan to build an extensive cell tower network from McMurdo out to the Dry Valleys,  but like most said it was extravagantly expensive and unnecessary (and luckily not approved).  But clearly there’s at least one new way to connect with the civilized world.   Starlink is now a thing in Antarctica too,  dramatically improving bandwidth if you’re lucky enough to have a downlink station (and yes, McMurdo is experimenting with that, as are some deep field teams).

Jim and (maybe) Erin leaving the plane. 

For now, let’s be happy that they’ve arrived at their penultimate destination and hopefully we’ll start getting regular updates from the team the old-fashioned way (email).

-Ralph