Why NASA Researchers Such as Alberto Behar Come to Antarctica
West Antarctica interests researchers because it's home to several fast moving "ice streams." Knowing how they work may be a clue to the stability of the entire ice sheet.
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Alberto Behar
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA / Caltech
On the third borehole the exciting part is we not only found a basal water system, we found 1.4 meters of water under the ice that we had no idea would be there. What we actually found was a small lake! That was very exciting for the scientists. It's still not very well understood for us, but it's being worked on right now.
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All who make it to Antarctica work very hard to make the short season of 24/7 sunlight pay off. And when you work hard and long in challenging conditions, you need to let off steam occasionally.
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Alberto Behar
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA / Caltech
We did some skiing behind skidoos. The folks at McMurdo were gracious enough to give us some skis, to do some cross country exercise, and we ended up doing some skiing on skidoos--don't tell them though! They are not supposed to know about that.
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So the expedition did good science, tested new technologies, but perhaps as important for long duration space missions are the human lessons of living and working on "The Ice."
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Alberto Behar
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA / Caltech
One of the great things that the heavy machinery mechanic told me, and he's been down there a few times, he said that you have really got to get along here. This is not the place to fight with anybody, because you can't get away from them. If you fall out of place with somebody, you can only go five feet away from them, you have to stay around, so that causes you to really think about how you treat people, how you might affect other people, what your actions are, how to increase the harmony.
We actually had a small Christmas party dinner and we did a "Secret Santa" where we gave presents to each other and it was a great time. 2 of our scientists were playing music, one on a harmonica and the other one brought a pan flute, and they played this music for us, and it was very nice.
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For all we discover in Antarctica about seals and microbes surviving in extremes, it's just as likely that what we find out about the human spirit of exploration and ingenuity will be just as important.
(Read more about how Alberto got into space and earth science in his BIOgraphy.)
