Jun
22
2015
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Filling the Gap
The smallest of three U.S. scientific outposts in Antarctica, Palmer Station is the only one of the trio found north of the Antarctic Circle. Its establishment 50 years ago this year has proven vital for climate change research in Antarctica.
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Jun
15
2015
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Numbers Game
Spending a winter in Antarctica is just as challenging as it sounds. For the 45 people who remain at the South Pole Station through the cold and dark months this year, winter is a unique experience shared by a rare few. This year's crew by the numbers.
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Jun
08
2015
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Firsthand Account
Amanda Biederman is a scientist at Palmer Station, located in one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth, the West side of the Antarctica peninsula. Amanda offers her perspective on Antarctic climate change, ice shelf loss, and the dangers of taking the stability of Antarctic ice for granted.
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Jun
08
2015
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Good Things Come in Small Packages
Led by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, IcePod bundles together a suite of instruments into a capsule designed to provide new details about structures above, within and below Antarctica's ice-covered surface.
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Jun
01
2015
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What Could Have Been
History is full of tales about boom towns that went bust. Such was the fate of Marble Point, a helicopter refueling station that as early as the 1960s was a serious contender for becoming the main research station in the U.S. Antarctic Program.
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May
19
2015
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Making a Difference
Col. Denise M. Donnell has chased pirates in the South China Sea and flown all manner of aircraft, from the sub-hunting P-3 Orion to the massive, cargo-carrying C-5 Galaxy. But perhaps one of the best parts of her job brings her to Antarctica each austral summer.
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May
11
2015
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Anatomy of a Deglaciation
One way to understand how Antarctica's ice will melt - which glaciers will recede when - is to look at how it happened in the past. Trevor Williams and his team traveled to a remote mountain range to collect rocks to help map out previous deglaciations.
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May
11
2015
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Day of Remembrance
On April 25, New Zealand's Scott Base crew invited McMurdo Station residents to make the two-kilometer trip over the hill and join them in celebrating ANZAC Day, a holiday honoring the fallen soldiers from the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps in World War I and subsequent conflicts.
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May
04
2015
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Remote Recovery
After more than two years since launching the SuperTIGER Long Duration Balloon, a joint team of scientists, mountaineers and support personnel finally recovered the buried instrument from a remote spot in the middle of Antarctica earlier this year.
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Apr
27
2015
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A Sticky Problem
A telescope launched 35 kilometers into the stratosphere above Antarctica had a singular mission: to detect the impossibly faint signal from when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light, a theory known as cosmological inflation.
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Apr
20
2015
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Passing of a Legend
Those who knew Capt. Pieter J. Lenie - the scientists who depended on him to reach the unreachable and the crew that depended upon him for their lives - the long-serving master of the research vessel Hero was, well, a hero. His death at age 91 marks the end of an era.
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Apr
13
2015
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Underground Movement
There is an underground movement underway in Antarctica. This particular movement doesn't involve radical political parties or fringe music festivals, though the idea of super salty water moving through the shallow subsurface of the Dry Valleys may eventually shake up established orthodoxy.
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Apr
06
2015
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Sorting It Out
A scavenger bird of the Antarctic, skua is also the adopted name for the collection of miscellaneous items that USAP participants leave behind for use by current and future residents. The collection of available skua is never greater than at the beginning of the winter.
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So Long, and Thanks For All the Fine Memories
All Creatures Great and Small
