The Dominion Range and some beautiful blue ice (though snow covered on our pull-out day).

The past few days in McMurdo have been a bit of a whirlwind, but we wanted to share a few final highlights as the season winds down, and provide a look at what will come next.

We’ve spent the last couple of days getting all of our cargo back, returning gear, sorting food, cleaning gear, and getting back in touch with the world. We had collected a few final meteorites in the field when we were picking up flags, so we wanted to make sure this last batch of meteorites made it onto the vessel (success!). We’re excited to see more than 200 meteorites on their way to JSC. The vessel is still at McMurdo, and it’s been fun to see the progress as it gets loaded and hopefully ships out tomorrow (January 31). McMurdo has been a busy place this week as many groups return from the field and others prepare to winter over, and there’s the hustle and bustle of 24-hr vessel operations.

Sorting gear at the BFC. Here’s the organized chaos of unloading cargo, cleaning gear, and getting it ready for future use. Pictured from left to right: Jim (in the back near the Scott tents), Brian, Minako, Jesse and Annalise (BFC employees), and Daniela.

Jim gave a great science talk on Sunday night summarizing ANSMET and some of the highlights from this season. The galley was packed for his talk and he gained a lot of audience participation in the “find the meteorite” slides (a “Where’s Waldo” style photo to see who can identify the smooth, dark, shiny, different sized rock among the imposters). It was fun to reflect on the season and answer questions from a lot of interested audience members!

Pastor Jim spreading the ANSMET gospel in the galley.

As for our return to NZ and on to our respective homes, we are all scheduled to depart on February 6th on a C-17 (except for Jon, who rolled the lucky number to get the last remaining seat on an earlier C-130 flight… is he heading back to NY? Maybe he should consider Vegas given his luck!). Until then, we’re keeping busy closing out this season, getting in touch with family, saying hi to some emperor penguins, and soaking in the beauty of this magical continent.

Vessel operations – hopefully our meteorites are in one of those containers!

We also wanted to say thank you to our readers for following along on this journey. We hope you enjoyed this year’s glimpse into life and fieldwork in Antarctica, and hearing about some of the exciting finds this season. It was a short but very productive field season, and the team feels a big sense of accomplishment in finally completing work at Davis-Ward and closing down the field camp there. We look forward to the next step when these samples are analyzed, and when we can learn more about what they reveal about our early solar system! The feeling of finding a meteorite and thinking about the incredible journey that it has experienced will never get old. Thanks again to ANSMET leadership and this team for an amazing experience, I know we are all so grateful to be a part of this project.

Brian’s newest  monumental landscape art installation, entitled “Dreams of Next Season”. Otherwise known as the ANSMET gear cache , now on display at the main Dominion Range icefield sculpture garden.  Will we ever see that shovel again?  The best art asks challenging questions.

On a final note, we wanted to leave you with a small preview of the next ANSMET season at the Dominion Range. Before we left the field we had a couple of flights on a Twin Otter to cache gear there, and got a view of some of the spectacular mountains, glaciers, moraines, and blue ice fields. It looks like a beautiful place to continue the search for meteorites, and we wish the next ANSMET team a lot of success!

Lauren,  signing off for ANSMET 2023-2024   (note from RPH- not forever, I hope).