Camp from above

  Winds were perfect yesterday for getting a kite cam up in the air. You can see our four main tents, the poo and science tents, our skidoos, a red sled, some fuel and cargo depots. The distant horizon at the top continues much like this for 350 miles to...

Read more

Tent day

Today we woke to 35 knot winds, with snow blowing everywhere, covering boxes, and bags and drifting in our tent doors. After the initial scramble to cover the skidoos, there was nothing left possible to do outside, so we crawled back in our warm bags. When the winds are...

Read more

Some end of season details….

    Hi all,  Ralph here.    In addition to the post "ANSMET by the numbers" I got some details on the pull-out of the team, which effectively has begun.   In the simplest terms it's a reverse of the put-in,  with the team shuttling in smaller planes (Twin Otter) back...

Read more

ANSMET by the numbers!

  2 Days left in the season and this my first and last blog so I thought I would give you ANSMET by the numbers, a kind of primer on the program and generally fun factoids concerning our mission! 1912 Year that the first meteorite was found in Antarctica, by Mawson's...

Read more

The 300 Club

Today was a highly productive day of meteorite hunting, and we've now found over 300 specimens! We collected several beautiful achondrites, one of which is particularly intriguing and has gotten all of the ANSMET team especially excited. We woke up this morning to 15-20mph wind blowing so much snow...

Read more

Antarctica – old and new

  Every night, Johnny reads to us from the journals of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton, mainly from a book "Race for the South Pole" by Roland Huntford. We hear what each of these parties did on the same calendar date we are in. I've heard everyone remark at some point...

Read more

mysteries of the ice

  The universe abounds with innumerable "Saganesque" mysteries, billions and billions of unknowns with an even greater number of clues to stimulate the souls and minds of all humans. We, the members of ANSMET 2013-14, feel privileged beyond words to be at the cusp of investigation into some of these...

Read more

humans vs robots?

  When I describe to people how we search for meteorites out here - eight people on skidoos, looking with our eyes and collecting with our hands - a natural question that comes up is, why don't we use robots for that? After all, we send some pretty sophisticated robots...

Read more

Surviving in the field..

It was a beautiful, balmy day today around the Miller Range camp area. It's amazing how the lack of winds makes such a big difference to our comfort levels out in the field. Once we heard that our resupply flight had been cancelled for the day, we took off...

Read more