Cold hard facts
Robots — and their creators brave the cold of the poles in the name of science By Danielle Lucey
N
egative 24.5 degrees Celsius —
that is the average temperature mea-
sured by the National Science Foundation during a recent summer at Summit Station, a year-round research camp located on the
gions Research, camped out for one week
ing. Greenland’s weather had other ideas,
this past July.
dropping about a foot and a half of snow
Using unmanned aerial vehicles at these temperatures is a bit of old hat, though it
on the ground during the one week the researchers were there.
can be difficult in poor conditions. But get-
“In fact, the time of the season we were up
ting a ground robot to wheel along through
there, it was July in Greenland, the particu-
some uncharacteristically soft, fresh summer
lar robot we were using on this mission was
snow is a big challenge.
not the one that we intended to use.”
town — that Dartmouth researchers, in a
“The robot’s not meant to work in pow-
Dartmouth got involved in the subzero proj-
joint project with the University of New
dery snow,” says Laura Ray, a professor
ect when the team created a robot aimed
Hampshire and the U.S. Army’s Cold Re-
at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineer-
at measuring the ionosphere and magneto-
Greenland Ice Sheet. Only accessible via a C-130 Hercules that lands on a snow runway, it’s at this remote station — 285 miles (460 kilometers) from the nearest
Yeti gets ready to traverse the snowy terrain in Antarctica on a 2010 mission. All photos courtesy Eric M. Trautmann, Laura Ray, Dartmouth University.
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Mission Critical
•
Winter 2011