I'm here as part of the camera support for the Cusp Region EXperiment 2A (C-REX-2A), a NASA sounding rocket mission that will release 20 tracer clouds into the ionosphere above the Greenland Sea. The launch window is 01-16 December. We have a camera site here at the Kjell Henricksen Observatory (KHO) and there will be another at Ny-Ålesund, a center for international arctic scientific research and environmental monitoring. The third camera site will be aboard a NASA Gulfstream jet that has been reconfigured for cameras instead of people.
Yesterday was a productive day at the camera site. We checked all the settings on our laptops and cameras and assembled the camera box shelves. Because of the cold, our cameras are housed on shelves in heated boxes. A few hiccups along the way (we tripped the breaker twice) but overall it went extremely well. We were not allowed to go outside, since there was no one there to protect us from potential polar bears, so were unable to set up our tripods and run cables. Our final team member arrives today and we will begin the outside work on Wednesday. Our first course of action is to climb up onto the deck to shovel it off. At this point, there is a drift against the door that prevents us from pushing it open.
The road to the observatory is still clear enough that we were able to drive all the way up, yesterday. The day before, we used the Hagglund Beltwagon, a tracked vehicle with a personnel carrier attached.
Yay! "Black Week" here, so I was able to buy a parka for 15% off.
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