Arrived at Rothera this morning, we had some cargo to offload and some waste to load.
In the afternoon I walked up to the base for a cuppa then went out in the FRC with the chief mate. Rothera base is completly different to Halley, there are 6 or 7 different buildings, a runway with aircraft hangar, a dive/boat centre and its mostly rock, surrounded by snow covered mountains.
We are now heading towards Pine Island glacier to input the Istar project. It is approx. 1000 miles. The Istar project is completly new for BAS and it is in a brand new area of operations. The project is to place a team on the glacier and for them to set fuel dumps. The project is for 4 years, each year the living accommodation, etc will be winterised and left for the following years science. The glacier itself is the biggest one in the world and is moving much faster than predicted, the scientists want to investigate the reasoning behind this.
The ice is thick down there, this ship has never been down that far. It is new terrirtory for the ship and crew. Hopefully we can find a spot to land the people and equipment but we wont know for sure until we are down that far.
There is a chance that we will lose all sat comms for 10 days or so, if I dont update the blog for a while, thats why, no need to worry!
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