ANITA-III 2014 Journey

ANITA-III in McMurdo

ANITA-III (The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) is a scientific balloon fly on the high sky, 35km altitude above sea leave, to detecting the extra-high energy neutrinos and cosmic-rays. ANITA collaboration is building and test the ANITA-III in McMurdo, Antarctica and expect to launch in Dec,2014 (Fig.1 & Fig.2). LeCosPA, NTU is one of participants to build the ANITA-III, one of the fellow, Tsung-Che Liu, will report the recent progresses to you every ten days until the launch time.

The test and launch place is CSBF Long Duration Balloon (LDB) facility and located on the famous Ross ice shelf (Fig.3 & Fig.4). The Ross ice shelf is 50 meters high above the water surface and Ross ice shelf is the biggest ice Shelf of Antarctica, the total area of the Ross ice shelf is roughly about the size of France.

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Figure 1: ANITA-III antennas building. ANITA-III includes 48 broadband antennas, from 180-1200MHz, and one low frequency antenna, 30 to 80Hz. In this picture, people are checking the mechanical structures of ANITA-III system, top, and meddle of antennas. After the checking, ANITA-III will move back to payload house and start to assemble the bottom antennas.

MCM

Figure 2: McMurdro station. McMurdro station is operated and supported by the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). This station is the supporting base for Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, hence the most residents are supporting staff. But, during the summer time, a lot of scientists go to McMurdro station for researching and the total residents usually increase from 200 to 1000 people.

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Figure 3: The LDB site has two huge building used for assembly the payload (first two buildings of left-hand side). Others are supporting buildings such as bathroom facilities, a galley for serving lunch, etc.

Erebus

Figure 4: Ross ice shelf and Erebus volcano.. Since the Ross shelf is too flat, all items looks very tiny. even the 3794m high Erebus volcano is just like a small hill behind the LBD site.

[Nov/9th]

All Anita-III cargoes already moved to the LDB, MCM station, Antarctica. During the first week, ANITA-III members assembled the gondola structure for top and middle antennas and test the basic function of ANITA-III main system (Fig.5). NASA supporting engineers also test the SIP functions in the same time.(Fig.6) T_M_antenna

Figure 5: The building of middle antennas. The top antennas are already mounted to the gondola and the others on the ground are middle antennas. Each antenna have two feeds, one horizontal and one vertical, hence it can detect the both polorizations of the EM radiation.

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Figure 6: NASA Support Instrumentation Package (SIP) for ANITA-III. SIP provides communications, coarse pointing… service for ANITA-III.

[Noc/10-Nov/12]

ANITA-III team start the RF leakage test of SIP and ANITA mian system inside the portable shielding tent (Fig.7). After the test, ANITA-III move to snow field and test the functions of top and middle antennas with calibration pulse antenna (Fig.8).

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Figure 7: RF leakage test of ANITA-III main system. The ANITA-III main system is put into the portable shiedling tent for RF leakage test. This test try to avoid the possible RF signals that generated by ANITA-III main system itself and pollute the antennas signal.

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Figure 8: The ANITA-III Antenna test with calibration pulse antenna in show field. We move the ANITA-III outside door and also put a calibration antenna behind the ANITA-III. The oscillacope shows the spectrum of pulse radation which received by the antennas of ANITA-III.

[Nov/13th-Nov/14th]

bottom_antenae

Figure 9: Bottom antennas of ANITA-III. Left panel: people are preparing to mount the bottom antennas to the ANITA-III gondola and set up the instruments for the clibration. Right panel: People are arraging the calbes with ampilifer boxes and tieing to the ANITA-III gondola.

[Nov/15th-Nov/19th]

calibration

Figure 10: The calibration run of ANITA-III antennas. Before the launch, all 48 antennas have to calibrate and record the spectrum, gain value, time delay, etc.

[Nov/21]

PVtest

Figure 11: PV(photovoltaic) testing of Solar plane. ANITA-III contains several solar planes to supply the power to ANITA-III. Brain Hill, Mark Stockham, and Dana Braun (taking photos) are testing the reliability of solar plane module in the cold temperature. (Photo credit: Dana Braun)