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A chain of autonomous, digital, lower power instruments have been built and deployed on the East Antarctic Plateau as part of a collaborative science mission between Center for Space Science and Engineering Research at Virginia Tech (Space@VT), the Space Physics Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton, VA.
These Autonomous Adaptive Low-Power Instrument Platforms (AAL-PIP) comprise of a search-coil magnetometer, a fluxgate magnetometer, a Connected Autonomous Space Environment Sensor (CASES) GPS receiver and a HF transceiver system that serve as a conjugate to a similar chain of instruments that have been deployed on the west coast of Greenland, and enable simultaneous studies of the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field in both hemispheres. I was part of the science team that traveled to Antarctica and deployed these instruments over the period of a month during the 2012 and 2013 seasons, and received the Antarctica Service Medal from the National Science Foundation for my work there.
High Latitude chains of magnetometers
High Latitude chains of magnetometers
The dipole nature of the Earth's magnetic field causes it to converge downwards towards the Earth's surface at high latitudes, and its interactions with the solar wind in the outer magnetosphere can be observed and studied using an array of ground based instruments.
The AAL-PIP systems deployed in the Southern Hemisphere are magnetically conjugated to a similar set of instruments that have been previously installed in the Northern Hemisphere - both these sets of instruments have been deployed along the 40 degree magnetic meridian. This allows for coherent, simultaneous measurements of the solar wind/magnetosphere interactions in both hemispheres, which in turn facilitates studies of asymmetries between the summer and winter hemispheres.
Illlustration: NASA CXC
The Instruments
The Instruments
The AAL-PIP system is powered by a bank of lead-acid batteries which in turn are charged via solar panels. The brains of the system is housed in separate box, and contains a computer running a lightweight version of Linux which is programmable via iridium. The system is designed to autonomously collect, store and transmit data, and automatically enter and return from a sleep state during winter months (when there is no sunlight to charge the batteries).
The fluxgate magnetometer is used to obtain a 3-axis measurement of the absolute magnetic field, while the search-coil measures the field strength along 2 axes and can provide information on the temporal variation of the magnetic fields.
Image credit: Robbie Robertson
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