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Field Operations for AGASEA-BBAS took place in the austral summer of 2004-2005.  This involved an enormous effort by many people ranging from the sixteen personnel from UTIG and six from BAS who carried out the scientific and engineering work to the Raytheon employees who planned the logistics, built the field camps and provided field support, to the NY Air National Guard crews who operated the LC-130's providing fuel and supplies (45 flights worth!), and of course the Kenn Borek pilots and engineers who provided UTIG survey aircraft support.

To get things started, UTIG configured and tested their aerogeophysical survey platform at McMurdo Station from late October through most of November, while BAS configured theirs at Rothera.  Once the deep field camps were ready (which was three weeks later than planned), the two teams deployed to their camps and spent approximately two months surveying, accomplishing a total of 109 flights acquiring over 75,000 line-km of ice-penetrating radar, gravity, magnetics, laser altimeter (UTIG), and radar altimeter (BAS) data, not to mention all the ancillary data sets such as precision carrier-phase GPS.

BAS based at Pine Island Camp, while UTIG based at Thwaites Camp.  UTIG's aircraft and flight crews made a number of stopovers at Pine Island to refuel and of course to bring presents to their British colleagues who lived on meager rations of porridge and powdered milk (okay, not quite, but they did have it a bit more rough than at Thwaites).

Over the tongue of Thwaites Glacier in UTIG's survey aircraft

Updates from the field:

AGASEA Field Updates

 Mike Tritchler brings AGASEA to 5th graders in San Diego!

Proposed Survey Objectives :: Experiment Plan :: Results
 Field Operations :: Instrumentation :: Airborne Geophysics at UTIG