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This winter NASA is sending two scientists all the way to the South Pole to measure

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the ice sheet elevation along a route no one has previously

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documented. The elevation data gathered is needed to improve the accuracy

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of the upcoming global laser-altimeter mission, ICESat-2,

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which will measure the height of Earth from orbit. Accompanied by only two other

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crew members, the NASA scientists will slowly trek along 300

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kilometers around the 88-South latitude, traversing through

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a remote and relatively unknown icescape. But first,

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they need to pack.
Neumann: This thing is a new ground-penetrating

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radar, and we're going to first unpack it and see that we got everything we're supposed to have.

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Neumann: And that's the main control system--
Brunt: Two sets of two, I think, so there's four--

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Neumann: The reason that we're going to have one of these along is that we're going to

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Antarctica in support of the 88-South Calibration Project for ICESat-2, and it's a new

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part of the continent where people really haven't been before--we certainly haven't been before--

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and for safety reasons, you bring along one of these systems.

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This will measure layers underneath the snow and if we measure the depth of

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those layers and how those depths change, we'll learn about how much snowfall we get in that

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area, which, again, a place that hasn't really been studied much before, kind of a question mark.

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Brunt: This is also an area where we have very little satellite data. It's one of the reasons why

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we're going there. It's the southernmost extent of where we have data for ICESat-2,

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even though it's the southernmost limit, it's also the most dense area for our dataset.

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But, a lot of satellites are kind of blind to this area,

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there's very little information. So even though our expectations are that it's thick and slow-

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moving ice and we shouldn't have a problem, better safe than sorry.

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Brunt: So we'll leave here, you lose a day in transit because you go over the

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International Date Line. We'll arrive in Christchurch, and, you know,

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roughly a day or two later. From there there's a couple of just logistical

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busy things to do, and then we'll fly via military to McMurdo Station,

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which is on the edge of the continent. So at sea level, roughly.

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And that's a really large base, roughly a thousand beds,

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so it's very active, but you need that number of people to run the runways, make the food,

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make sure people have housing. So we'll fly eventually to the South Pole,

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and that's kind of cool because you'll have to fly on aircraft that have skis to

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get into the South Pole because there isn't any rock exposed at the South Pole.

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South Pole is actually at about 10,000 feet above sea level, so

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rather than just hit the ground and go out and set everything up and start running,

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we'll spend some time acclimatizing to the altitude.

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But we'll fly into the South Pole, we'll get our gear all set up, put it onto PistenBullys

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with big sleds, then we'll start driving. And our drive is about

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750 kilometers roundtrip to get back to South Pole.

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Neumann: Do we want to ship this?
Brunt: No.

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Neumann: We are not going to be wearing this--

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[music]