Take a flight to the "frozen continent" aboard a Russian cargo plane, then tour Maitri Station and find out what it’s like to live and work in Antarctica continent during a scientific expedition. This is the first installment in a series of video journals by Dr. Philipp Heck documenting the 2012 joint expedition between The Field Museum, the Geological Survey of India, the Russian Antarctic Expedition, and the SETI Institute. The expedition itself was sponsored by The Tawani Foundation.
Cross a treacherous crevasse aboard a Pisten Bully (a giant snow bulldozer) with Dr. Philipp Heck as he joins Dr. Dale Andersen's team along the shores of Antarctica's frozen Lake Untersee. This is the second installment in a series of video journals by Dr. Heck documenting the 2012 joint expedition between The Field Museum, the Geological Survey of India, the Russian Antarctic Expedition, and the SETI Institute. The expedition itself was sponsored by The Tawani Foundation.
Dive into the frigid waters of Lake Untersee with Dr. Dale Andersen to meet a living community of some of Earth’s oldest fossils—stromatolites—and learn more about the different kinds of cyanobacteria that create them. This is the third installment in a series of video journals by Dr. Heck documenting the 2012 joint expedition between The Field Museum, the Geological Survey of India, the Russian Antarctic Expedition, and the SETI Institute. The expedition itself was sponsored by The Tawani Foundation.
Watch as Dr. Philipp Heck trains the India Geological Survey team on how to find and collect meteorites in Antarctica. This is the fourth installment in a series of video journals by Dr. Heck documenting the 2012 joint expedition between The Field Museum, the Geological Survey of India, the Russian Antarctic Expedition, and the SETI Institute. The expedition itself was sponsored by The Tawani Foundation.
Discover how Dr. Philipp Heck and team members from the Geological Survey of India measure the depth of ice on Lake Untersee and study the lakebed.Discover how Dr. Philipp Heck and team members from the Geological Survey of India measure the depth of ice on Lake Untersee and study the lakebed. This is the fifth installment in a series of video journals by Dr. Heck documenting the 2012 joint expedition between The Field Museum, the Geological Survey of India, the Russian Antarctic Expedition, and the SETI Institute. The expedition itself was sponsored by The Tawani Foundation.
I thought I’d begin my blog post by giving you a brief introduction to Antarctic meteorite collecting. The process was developed by the scientific community over time, and these procedures have now been formalized as a set of rules that govern the collection of meteorites in Antarctica. Many other programs, such as The Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET)—and now the Geological Survey of India—have implemented these procedures.
In preparation for our meteorite fieldwork, my colleagues and I spent some time practicing our spotting and collecting techniques. We looked for different locations where the movement of the Antarctic ice had delivered up rocks to its surface (see above photo.)
After our first fieldwork trip to Lake Untersee, we returned to Maitri Station where we were able to spend some time warming up and preparing for our next field trip. With this in mind, I thought it might be interesting to tell you a bit about how an Antarctic field station works.
A typical field team consists of technical and support staff to keep the station running and includes a commander, a medical doctor, and scientists like geologists, geophysicists, and meteorologists.
When I last wrote, we had just set up camp along the Anuchin Glacier and were preparing to conduct a geophysical and geological survey of Lake Untersee. The glacier is unusual in that it flows southwards into the lake. Elsewhere in Antarctica, most of the ice flows northwards into the ocean surrounding the continent.
I’ve just returned from a quick trip to Lake Untersee, and I thought I’d catch you up on our experiences there, since we had no internet access while at our remote camp….
Last Sunday, I and my colleagues from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) headed out from Maitri Station (see above photo and Photo #1 below) to begin our initial fieldwork project: conducting a geophysical survey of Untersee, a permanently ice-covered freshwater lake in the Gruber Mountains.
