South Pole Weekly Report, November 15, 2008
- View on approach to South Pole!
- Photo by T. Gaisser
IceCube Drillers and other staff began arriving at The South Pole Station on November 6. With seventeen IceCube participants arriving at Pole on November 12 the IceCube population reached plan level at 45. The arrival of 3 additional team members on the 15th brought us to a plan total of 48, almost full strength. All crew appear to be healthy and adapting to the conditions.
Repair or upgrade cargo scheduled for delivery continues to arrive with about 95,000 lbs. received so far. Two new IceCube snowmobiles are scheduled for delivery to Pole this season expanding transportation resources for equipment and personnel in the Drill Camp. Equipment not delivered by the Required On Site (ROS) date has been identified within the cargo supply chain to optimize delivery to Pole. There are two cargo shipments ready to leave Pole: Data Magnetic Media Tapes are to be shipped to the IceCube Data Warehouse in Wisconsin and a compressor has been prepped for shipment to McMurdo.
- Connecting the heating hose at Drill Camp
- Photo by T. Hannaford
Drill Camp snow removal was completed by November 13, thanks to a great effort by the Raytheon crew and some finishing off work by the drillers. All Drill Camp buildings have power and are being heated.
Work on the camp setup has begun in earnest: hooking up the systems, including plumbing, network and E-stop wiring. Most of the Main Heat Plants (MHPs) have had their flow meters installed. Assembly of the new bottom feed fuel tank is nearing completion. The firn drill has been delivered and plugged into power beside the drill camp.
The drillers were reminded of the Safe Start principles during the weekly all-hands meeting. Weekly reminders will be given during the driller and other Meetings going forward. Overall progress has been very good so far, despite some minor hiccups with the fuel. The crew has made a great start to the season.
- Photo by J. Haugen
Preparation and planning for pulling cable into the IceCube Lab (ICL) has begun. The first cable pull is scheduled for December 2. During this past week, we successfully removed the 158 Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) and staged them in locations in preparation for testing at the Operations and Maintenance Lab (OML). Twenty-eight IceTop freeze control units that were stored in the ICL over the winter were taken to the IceTop Weather Port to continue refurbishing them for the season. The ICL is in good shape but will benefit from a spring housecleaning that is scheduled for the upcoming week.
After arriving Wednesday, November 12, the first DOM testers for this season have been busy preparing for the first SPAT (South Pole Acceptance Test). Most testing equipment has been stored in the ICL over the winter. By Saturday, November 15, SPAT1 officially started.
- Photo by H. Kolanoski
Delivery of IceTop tanks to the drill camp staging area has begun. The first sunshade frame was installed. Next week we will install sunshade frames and we will start preparing the tanks for Freeze Control Units (FCUs). Most of the IceTop station pits have been surveyed and flagged. Pit excavation will begin next week. A work area was set up in the ICL and FCU refurbishment was completed on 12 of the 28 FCUs from last season. The FCUs tested so far have been in excellent condition. The IceTop weather port was ready for use as of November 14. We also inspected the IceTop test tanks from 2003. The ice appears in good shape with good adhesion to the DOMs. The tanks were dark with only a minimal amount of the insulation removed. Further investigation will be required to determine the clarity of the ice.
We began to document the status of the AMANDA hardware and the functionality of the software. An essential part of this goal is to resolve the rate discrepancies between recorded hardware triggers, software retriggering and Monte Carlo simulations. Previous data analysis suggested hardware problems: deviations between nominal and actual discriminator thresholds by a factor of two were inferred.
