LDB is Open!

Yes you heard it! After much anticipation, our main facility at the Long Duration Balloon facility now has power and heat. One thing that I never stop appreciating is that the base itself is out on the ice shelf several miles from land over the open water! In fact, all the buildings are on skis […]

Ross Island Pressure Ridges

With LDB open now (hooray!), we are understandably a bit more occupied with setting up the lab and assembling BLAST! A few days before we were allowed at the site, we had the chance to tour the pressure ridges near the New Zealand (“Kiwi”) base, aka Scott Base. The pressure ridges are where the sea […]

Adventures In and Around McMurdo

Welcome to McMurdo Station! With the LDB (Long Duration Balloon) facility still starting up, we’ve taken the opportunity to do some exploring on some of the hikes and sights in and around town. Since it is perpetually daylight, a lot of our exploring took place in the middle of the “night”, which was no different […]

Trip to Antarctica: more photos!

Antarctica bound!

The time has come! I haven’t had a whole lot of time with so much going on over the past couple of days, but I thought I’d share some of the highlights from the actual trip to McMurdo Station on Monday. I took a couple of pictures of the night sky the preceding night, once […]

New Zealand

Well it’s 4am here on a Sunday morning in Christchurch, and despite my best efforts , I am wide awake 🙃. Spent the day yesterday catching up with the rest of the first-wave BLAST team (5 of us total), two of which have had roughly five attempts over the past week to reach the Antarctic […]

And we’re off!

And just like that, I’m on my way! Just a 4 hour hop over to Houston, a 15 hour jump to Auckland, NZ, and a 3 hour skip to Christchurch, NZ. Even managed to make it to the Pearson Airport in Toronto with only one emergency trip back to the apartment (!) before finally heading […]

The Day Before…

A warm welcome to friends, family, and all those with a (perhaps slightly morbid) sense of curiosity into the breathtakingly exciting and terrifyingly perilous world of scientific ballooning from Antarctica. During my roughly three month stay at McMurdo Station on the Antarctic continent, I will strive to be vigilant with routine updates on launch preparation […]