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so they fly you down on a military cargo

2
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plane so it's not like your passenger

3
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jet with windows everywhere that you can

4
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kind of see where you're coming into you

5
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just kind of land and they tell you

6
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you've arrived on antarctica and pop

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open a door

8
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thank you

9
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it's really breathtaking the first time

10
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you walk off the plane you get a blast

11
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of cold air in the face and it's sunny

12
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it's everything's white so it's really

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bright and sunny so we landed in mcmurdo

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which is on the coast so you've got

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this huge volcano in the background

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mount erebus and the trans-antarctic

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mountains and mount discovery off to one

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side and

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sea ice and a little ice shelf that

20
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you've just landed on i think the thing

21
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that struck out to me the most was you

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have these small little stations and you

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can easily get in your head that you're

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on campus or

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wherever but sort of realizing that when

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you look out that it's like yeah the

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next place is a couple thousand miles of

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nothing just white

29
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it took us about 12 days to conduct the

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entire traverse from south pole back

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around to south pole and that's moving

32
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you know roughly

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seven

34
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or so hours a day of travel and then

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then the real work begins

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what we're doing is collecting gps data

37
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which gives us not only our latitude and

38
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longitude but it also gives us our

39
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elevation we take those gps elevation

40
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measurements which are precise down to

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about the centimeter level and we

42
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compare them directly against icesat-2's

43
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we go to this part of the world because

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basically the icesat-2 orbits all

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converge at 88 degrees north and 88

46
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degrees south so we get the densest data

47
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record that's great from a validation

48
00:01:56,389 --> 00:01:55,200
standpoint antarctica is a great place

49
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for this type of validation it's a

50
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relatively

51
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unchanging surface at that at that

52
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latitude

53
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and at that elevation we're interested

54
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in the centimeter level accuracy of the

55
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satellite centimeter level accuracy of

56
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our gps data the reason why we're

57
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interested in that is imagine a

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centimeter of water over the continental

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united states and now putting that into

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the ocean that's obviously a lot of

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water ultimately when we're interested

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in that level of change over that great

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distance so centimeters become really

64
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it's amazing how much elevation changes

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the environment

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the air is drier

67
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it's colder the wind bites a little

68
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harder

69
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what you doing kelly

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trying to breathe

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[Laughter]

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trying to breathe what's the problem

73
00:02:53,030 --> 00:02:50,239
with your breathing

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we're at 10 000 feet above sea level

75
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one of the additional instruments that

76
00:03:04,630 --> 00:03:01,920
we brought this year was this downward

77
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looking laser to get a grip on surface

78
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roughness as we're driving along sort of

79
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the small scale

80
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sastrugi and rolls in the snow as we're

81
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driving along that gives us a handle of

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00:03:16,790 --> 00:03:14,959
how much the gps is moving around

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if it's floating on top of the snow if

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it's moving with the roughness of the

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surface

86
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and then ultimately make corrections for

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that if we need to

88
00:03:26,949 --> 00:03:25,120
we've had two amazing traverses the

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first one was fantastic and a bit

90
00:03:30,390 --> 00:03:28,720
pioneering and figured out what worked

91
00:03:31,750 --> 00:03:30,400
what didn't work second one improved on

92
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that we've already thought about ways

93
00:03:34,869 --> 00:03:33,120
that we're going to improve the next one

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for sure maybe streamline things make