Jeffrey Donenfeld

Tag: ara

  • Scientist Terry Benson Presents On “Innovations in Hot Water Drilling at the South Pole”

    Scientist Terry Benson Presents On “Innovations in Hot Water Drilling at the South Pole”

    Last Austral Summer, I spent 3.5 months living at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. Among my many jobs on station, one of the most rewarding was the work I did with the Askaryan Radio Array drill and deployment teams. During my time working with the ARA, I got to spend some good time with Scientist Terry Benson. Here’s his excellent slide deck going over the science he’s working on at the South Pole, including details of the ARA Drill Rig I helped construct and test. Specifically, I helped construct the water tank overflow gutter, wired up the emergency stop switches, troubleshoot the main pump system, maintained the hose bindings, and tended to the drill as it operated.

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    Innovations in Hot Water Drilling at the South Pole

  • Building The Askaryan Radio Array At The South Pole

    This season while living and working at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and in some cases work with a few incredibly talented science teams taking part in ground breaking research. One such team was the ARA Team to construct the Askaryan Radio Array – A large-scale radio Cherenkov neutrino detector at the South Pole. Run by Principle Investigator Albrecht Karle, the ARA team consisted of experts in multiple fields. Drill team members Jim Haugen, James Roth, Terry Benson, Dave Pernic, Rob Young, Darrel Hailton and Thomas Mueres worked tirelessly to assemble and test the drill rig, and to drill ultra-precise holes deep into the ice. Deployment and instrumentation team members Chih-ching Chen, Jonathan Davies, Michael DuVernois, Yael Hagar Landsman, Christian Miki, Jiwoo Nam, Ken Ratzlaff, Michael Richman, and Ben Rotter successfully deployed the full suite of instrumentation deep into the ice, and linked it back to the Ice Cube Laboratory via fiber optic cable entrenched under the ice. Additionally, joining the team for a portion of the season was teacher Elizabeth Ratliff, who was here in conjunction with the PolarTrek program.

    An overview of the project, from the USAP Science Planning Summary:

    Dr. Karle and his international collaborators will probe the nature and cosmic evolution of the accelerators of the highest-energy cosmic rays by observing ultra-high-energy neutrinos produced when cosmic rays interact with the microwave background. At these very high energies, neutrinos can be detected in dense, radio-frequency-transparent media, such as ice, by the Askaryan effect. Its origin is an excess negative charge that builds up when electrons are swept out along a shower front advancing relativistically through the ice. The thickness )estimated to be almost two miles) and exceptional radio-frequency clarity makes the south pole ice cap an ideal place to study ultra high energy neutrinos. This project will develop and deploy a limited number of radio detector stations which will provide the basis for development of a much larger array. The work builds upon past and current neutrino observations including the IceCube and AMANDA Cherenkov observatories and the RICE and ANITA radio Askaryan telescopes in Antarctica as well as the Pierre Auger cosmic ray observatory in western Argentina.

    Throughout the first 2/3 of the season, I was privileged to be invited out to the field with the ARA team, to help out with a variety of levels of drill rig construction and testing of the drill rig, actual drilling deep into the polar ice sheet, and finally deployment of the first three ARA field instrumentation stations. Working with the team in the field was very hands on, precise, difficult, and rewarding work. Seeing the drill rig take shape, and then witnessing it drill actual holes deep into the ice was an extremely satisfying experience, as was working out on the polar ice with a great team.

    A few photos and commentary from my season working with the ARA team…

    We started the season by hauling all of the drill rig components out to a space in front of the IceCube laboratory. This was the main worksite for putting everything together. In addition to the drill rig components, we also had a number of large shipping containers which served as workshops and supply sheds.

    Driving in a winterized van from the south pole station out to the IceCube Laboratory (ICL)
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    Morning briefing, before starting work
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    Showing up in the mornings at the beginning of the season, here’s the rig components starting to come together
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    One of the emergency stop switches I installed – drilling with hot water in the middle of nowhere with a jet fuel-powered sled is dangerous – and the ability to shut it down instantly is critical.
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    Looking from the step at the mouth of the water tank down towards the snow melter, heaters, and hose reel.
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    Terry Benson double checking the valve configuration to feed hot water into the drill head
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    Me, fabricating a metal gutter, to catch water drips coming out of the main tank. Any liquid water that spills freezes almost immediately, so funneling it away from our work area and into a steel drum, and then into the ice, was critical.
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    And my gutter, installed. I also routed most of the electronics cables between the heater/hose reel sled and the tank sled.
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    The drill sled, almost complete, ready to be dragged out to the first drill site.
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    The drill team, in front of the newly assembled hose reel
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    After all of our equipment was towed out to the drill site, we got aroudn on snowmobiles – either on the machine itself, or riding a sled dragged behind. A very fun way to get around – although wind whipping through while zipping along the snow creates an incredible wind chill.
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    The ARA3 Drill Site. In this picture, you can see the fully assembled and working drill rig, as well as our power generator, and field workshop.
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    Inside the workshop we stored drill heads, supplies, food, medical equipment, etc. There was also a heater, microwave, and coffee maker.
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    As drilling gets started for the day, the team checks the status and fine-tunes the process at the Drill Information Center, built by James Roth.
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    The drill head, being guided down the fern hole.
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    Securing the drill head to the drill hose, and getting all of the water and power connections working.
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    As drilling proceeds, the team has various tasks, including keeping an eye on the reel progress, and maintaining rubber spacers embedded in the hose assembly.
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    And finally, a successfully drilled hole. In addition to these deep holes, sensors are also deployed in shallow pits on the surface.
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    After drilling is complete, the deployment team gets to work installing electronics and sensors into the ice. Here’s deployment expert Ben Rotter with the Pisten Bully that transports the deployment team.
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    The beginning of the ARA2 site. Eventually this box gets filled with data acquisition and relay electronics and buried in the ice.
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    The electronics box sits at the center of each site, and has a web of data and power cables extending out to each sensor array. Here’s the team burying the cabling for each sensor.
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    One of the shallow sensors, before being covered up.
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    Deep trenches allow the cables to be buried deep to protect them from any machinery driving overhead.
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    And finally, the ARA team at the south pole.
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    Thanks very much to the entire ARA team for generously allowing me to work with them throughout the season. Hopefully we’ll work together again sometime soon.

  • Exploring the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory

    Exploring the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory

    One of the amazing benefits of living here at the South Pole is that I get access to some of the world’s leading scientists, and the experiments they’re working on. In fact, the luxury of having meals and chatting with scientists, and then being able to go out to their experiments is by far one of the absolute best things about living here. It’s truly a once in a lifetime opportunity to have this many amazing people living together in one building. Once such experiments is the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory. Photos.

    After making friends with a few of the scientists working on the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) project coupled with the Ice Cube Lab, I was invited out to the main lab building to check out the facility, as well as help the ARA project set up their workshop.

    First, a bit of background on Ice Cube:

    IceCube is a particle detector at the South Pole that records the interactions of a nearly massless sub-atomic particle called the neutrino. IceCube searches for neutrinos from the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars. The IceCube telescope is a powerful tool to search for dark matter, and could reveal the new physical processes associated with the enigmatic origin of the highest energy particles in nature. In addition, exploring the background of neutrinos produced in the atmosphere, IceCube studies the neutrinos themselves; their energies far exceed those produced by accelerator beams. IceCube is the world’s largest neutrino detector, encompassing a cubic kilometer of ice.

    – From Wisc.edu

    Ice Cube Diagram:

    And on the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) from Wisc.edu:

    Building on the expertise gained in these efforts, and the infrastructure developed in the construction of the IceCube optical Cherenkov observatory, we are developing an array, known as ARA (The Askaryan Radio Array), and installing it in the deep ice near the geographical South Pole. South Polar ice is, in fact, perhaps the most extensively-studied on the planet, the combination of ice thickness and favorable radiofrequency dielectric characteristics, as well as the excellent scientific infrastructure and the co-location of the IceCube Observatory, makes that site unparalleled for this study. With a fiducial area of an unprecedented 80 km$^2$, ARA’s size was chosen to ensure the detection of the flux of neutrinos “guaranteed” by the observation of the GZK cutoff by HiRes and the Pierre Auger Observatory. Within 3 years of commencing operation, the full ARA will exceed the sensitivity of any other instrument in the 0.1-10 EeV energy range by an order of magnitude. Because the antennas will be deployed in boreholes extending below the firn layer to 200 m depth, it will have the ability to distinguish surface noise from sources originating in the ice cap, otherwise not possible in the ballon borne approach employed by ANITA. Even under the extreme assumption that UHE cosmic rays are pure iron, ARA will have sufficient sensitivity to establish the presence or absence of the secondary UHE neutrinos produced by the interaction of cosmic rays with the cosmic microwave background. Such an observatory would also provide an unique probe of long baseline high energy neutrino interactions unattainable with any man-made neutrino beam.

    Visiting the lab,and helping out with both setup of the worksite, as well as observing the installation of new networking hardware was great. A few pics: