News – Page 9 – ANSMET, The Antarctic Search for Meteorites

Final Days in McMurdo

January 30, 2020

The end is near for Alex, Brian, Johnny, and myself. The last couple days have been a whirlwind getting all our gear checked in, dishes cleaned, trash sorted, and unopened food returned. We’ve spent most of our days at the BFC (where our gear was checked out), at Crary...

Back to Christchurch

January 28, 2020

Cindy, Nicole, Marc and I made it back to Christchurch! Yesterday, we had breakfast at 6 am and by 6:30 we were transported to the airfield (look at how huge our red transport vehicle is!). It took about 45 minutes to travel a few miles to the Phoenix landing/take-off...

Together Again!

January 27, 2020

The team is together again in McMurdo! Lauren, Alex, Brian, and Johnny arrived this afternoon and took the remainder of camp gear with them. We are enjoying our last night together. Cindy, Nicole, Marc, and I have a long day tomorrow traveling to Christchurch, New Zealand. Lauren and Alex...

4 Made it to McMurdo!

January 26, 2020

The Basler plane landed successfully at Davis Ward yesterday and Cindy, Nicole, Marc and I are now back in McMurdo. We took 3 of 8 snow machines with us in addition to two tents, the meteorites, and a bunch of other gear. The rest of the team is scheduled...

Delayed

January 24, 2020

We are so good at waiting. From delays getting to Antarctica from New Zealand, then to Davis-Ward from McMurdo, and now back to McMurdo, we are waiting experts. Weather in McMurdo caused the flight this morning to be cancelled, so the schedule should just shift day-by-day until the weather...

Final Days

January 23, 2020

We are finished with meteorite hunting here at Davis Ward and have been packing up camp. A small twin otter plane stopped here this morning to fly about 800 pounds worth of stuff to McMurdo. I, along with Cindy, Nicole and Marc are scheduled to hop on a flight...

Cooking

January 22, 2020

It’s another tent day; it is cold and far too windy to be able to work outside. Tent days afford one the opportunity to sit in a small enclosed area, converse with your tent-mate, read long novels, and cook. For me, it is the opportunity to have a hot...

Field Work and Planetary Exploration

January 23, 2020

In previous posts, Alex explained how ANSMET serves as a great analog for spaceflight and Nicole discussed relevance of meteorite studies to other planetary missions such as the Apollo exploration of the Moon and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. Another ANSMET connection to NASA exploration is that in...

Disconnected

January 20, 2020

In a world where internet is master, it has been quite a change of pace for us to be disconnected for now 5 weeks. Here in the field, we rely on downloaded music, movies, and books (except that downloaded items from streaming services delete after a month without internet...

How Do We Get Rocks From Space?

January 19, 2020

There are two ways that humans get rocks from space: (1) Natural delivery of space rocks as meteorites (2) Space rocks directly brought back by space exploration missions known as returned samples. Probably the most famous example of how humans acquired rocks from space is when the Apollo astronauts collected...

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