In the last month engineers from MIT collaborated in conjunction with Coastal Helicopter and the Juneau Ice Research Program to create a high-risk egg drop. The event is similar to what you were taught in school but that the eggs are a fragile, expensive seismometer. The drop point is located 5,000 feet higher than it. Juneau Ice Field.
The drop device resembles an oblong lawn dart that measures six feet, and is known as”the “ice penetrator.” In the future, they’ll be used to install seismometers inside the glaciers of Antarctica to aid scientists in understanding the effects of climate changes. However, before that, the MIT team will need to find out if the design will prevent the egg metaphor from breaking.
Dr. Chester Ruszczyk leads the project and he appeared on the KTOO’s Anna Canny to talk about how the project went.
Listen:
The interview was edited to improve clarity and length.
Chet Rusczyk: It’s like the size of a lawn dart, which is six feet with an antenna on the topcalled the mast. The top portion is larger — it’s more like an disc. It remains on top since the mast needs to be above snow and ice to communicate. However, the part that houses the sensors and batteries that provide power keeps in the ice shelf.
In reality, the most important thing is that it must have sufficient speed to ensure that it can be separated from the other. However, it also includes in it the electronic cables that connect your antennas and the receivers that require information to and from it.
Anna Canny: And the final goal is for the drop of an ice penetrator off an aircraft to place seismometers inside Antarctica to track the change in the thickness of ice. Do you have a reason to explain to me the reason why this is an arduous task?
Chet Rusczyk: Since the seismometer’s sensitive. Most of the time, they’re meant to be dropped from the back of the pickup truck. If you say, yes we’ll be dropping it from 5,000 feet over the frozen shelf, they’re likely to panic. This was to install accelerometers in the system, and do just a couple of drops. Then, based on the drops, we’d be able to contact the seismometer experts and tell them, this is what we would expect that you must do to survive.
Anna Canny: And the purpose of putting accelerometers it is to determine force, in essence? What is the force that these seismometers eventually endure?
Chet Rusczyk: Correct.
Anna Canny: This prototype is a sort of fake version. It doesn’t have the fragile seismometers at the moment. However, when it is, they’ll test the movement of the ice shelf of Antarctica. What is the significance of this?
Chet Rusczyk Chet Rusczyk change. If large pieces of the glacier are torn off, seawater levels rise, and sea levels rise. Therefore, if this is to consider how you can anticipate this better? Consider your Ross Ice Shelf as suspended over a water layer. You’re going to experience waves from water beneath it, but you’ll encounter waves at the top and you’ll see atmospheric conditions pushing downwards on it. The seismometer really looking for is how does the ice respond to these three different types of waves?
Anna Canny Is there other aspects you’re thinking about, for the purpose of successfully deploying your ice penetrater?
Chet Rusczyk: It really would like to be straight in. Since using the seismometer there’s a gyroscope which will only straighten it when the tilt is too many degrees. Therefore, it seems like there were a lot of possibilities for things to be wrong, but it worked fine.
Anna Canny: And why remote deployment is so crucial? Why is it important to to drop sensor from the helicopter such as this beneficial?
Chet Rusczyk: One of the issues is that some friends of mine have collaborated with individuals in Antarctica and the Arctic and Antarctica and lives — even scientists’ lives been lost in the region. This kind of alleviates this issue by eliminating this from the equation while making things a simpler. They do have sensors that are manually put in place. But that’s not enough. Therefore, being able to dump a few pieces of trash from helicopters’ back or from the back of an airplane is much simpler.
Anna Canny Hey, thank you for being here It’s really exciting to think that Juneau had part in this fascinating science.
Chet Rusczyk Juneau has been crucial for us to be successful in Antarctica. This was very good.
