Hi, everyone … It’s November … usually the month in which the Polar Day begins, the isolation of the overwintering phase ends, and across the Antarctic, the stations transition into the hectic bustle of the summer season. Planes and ships come by, teams are exchanged and the new teams briefed, ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! … The month of October began with quite stormy weather. Accordingly, I decided to move up our normal medical study by a week, so as to make the most of the bad weather. This time we had to take additional blood samples for NASA, and complete some more psychological questionnaires ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! … It’s now been more than six months since we watched the last aeroplane take off. More than six months in isolation, over half a year with just the nine of us out in the ice, and still, the days and weeks have passed quickly. Soon the spring will be here … and with it, the first ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! Some things are just easier to say using dialect. And I remember last using this expression a year and a half ago on a ski tour when, at minus twenty degrees Celsius, the non-slip skins on my skis kept coming loose. We now have (as of 13 August) over 6 hours of sunlight every ...[Read more]
Hi, everyone! Just like every day, after getting up the first thing I look at on my office computer is the weather forecast. Today is Tuesday, 21 July 2020 (just to make it clear, since it usually takes a few days for the blog to go online), and tomorrow the sun is supposed to rise briefly for ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! Sundays are always a treat. You can sleep in a bit longer (at least some of us can …), and there’s not so much work to do (schedule permitting …), so you can just ease into the day and take care of the things you never get around to, and which are better done in peace and quiet ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! The Polar Night is growing darker, subjectively speaking we have about two and a half hours of twilight at midday, although our instruments claim we have partial light for nearly four hours. So there’s a slight disconnect between what we see and the hard data … When there’s no ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! Today I was rudely awakened as usual by my alarm clock, raised the blinds in my window and saw a strip of red on the horizon. Now you’re probably asking yourself what was so special about that. Well, for the past nine days we’d had snowstorms with wind speeds up to 60 knots, when ...[Read more]
Hello again, everyone! In the meantime, I’ve cobbled together some new bracing struts for our PowerKite, and treated it to a test flight on a day with pleasant weather but unfortunately very little wind (wind speed: 6 knots, temperature: minus 20 degrees). And it paid me back with an ...[Read more]
Hello, everyone! It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a break. The weather isn’t exactly inviting: the wind has picked up to 50 kilometres per hour, with light snowfall and drifting. I had actually planned to send up the station’s PowerKite, which I’d done maintenance on the day before, again. ...[Read more]
