19 July, 2000

Raytheon Polar Services

Today we journeyed across town to visit the headquarters of Raytheon Polar Services. Raytheon provides the support services for all U.S. science projects in Antarctica. It is an enormous and complicated task. Besides maintaining the facilities and staff, Raytheon must get everyone and all the proper equipment to the right place at the right time.

We met with Alana Jones, our person of contact. Gary was able to confirm details concerning flight schedules, equipment, and the camp set up at Siple Dome. The camp will include two other project teams and four support staff in addition to our group of three. I was relieved to hear that the camp will be provided with a cook. They say she is an excellent baker!

I spent the afternoon figuring out how to use the five temperature loggers we will deploy at Siple Dome. These are small devices that record temperature over a period of a year or more. The battery and internal sensor do not function well below -30C so I made insulating containers out of blue foam. I was aided by Mark Ohms, an electronics wizard who is building some of the key instruments we will be using in Antarctica

Mark Ohms in his lab at the U.S. Geological Survey

The temperature logger is the small white instrument with the wire probe.

Raytheon Polar Services headquarters in Denver.