Week 25 at the Pole

modem
NSF/D. Larsen

Since bundling up to go outdoors is a bit of an ordeal (well, it doesn’t look as bad when you speed things up), you don’t want to have to make unnecessary trips out to the ICL if you can avoid it. But there were a few of those unavoidable trips for the IceCube winterovers this past week. One was to replace a modem because of problems with an Iridium link. (Iridium Communications, a company whose global network of satellites includes both of the Poles, was named after the chemical element iridium … anyone know why?)

Back at the station, activities leaned more toward a training nature. Medical team members practiced suturing techniques on some cornish game hens. Not sure what became of the hens posttraining.

suturing
NSF/I. Rees