December 7, 2010... On our way to the South

It has been my dream to go to the space one day. I was always fascinated with the poles, especially because of the auroras, and several other astronomy related reasons such as the sun is either up in the sky the whole time just circling close to horizon or the whole sky rotates around just one point. But, I never really dreamed of being at any pole, especially the South Pole. Here I am.. Close to one of the poles. In fact, if you know, we cannot really go to the North Pole as there isn't one on land. It's somewhere in the Arctic Ocean. South Pole can be physically visited and more interestingly it physically moves by about 10-15 feet each year. The continent is not just a mammoth iceberg. It actually has land, live volcanoes. Apparently, the plate on which this continent is situated moves a bit every year, physically moving the South Pole.

Anyway, as a part of my space science project, this year I got a chance to be deployed in Antarctica, visit South Pole, work there on two instruments and the go to a remote place to fix a previously deployed instrument. This is a once in a life time opportunity and I realized this only when I was on my flight to Christchurch, NZ from where we were will be set to McMurdo, the largest base station on Antarctica under the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). After a rigorous physical examination, NZ Visa process, and a number of drills to set up our equipment, I was on my way to the South with two other colleagues: Joseph and Hyomin...