Airdrop

 Earlier this week we had some excitement in the way of a practice airdrop.  In an airdrop, a C-17 flies to the South Pole (normally we only get LC-130s and smaller ski equipped planes that can land on the snow runway).  When it gets there the plane flies much closer to the ground, and without landing, opens the back hatch and drops cargo out the back (with parachutes).  The need for an airdrop can happen in either the summer or the winter, and there is a different drop zone for each.  The winter drop zone is much closer to the station so that people don't have to go as far to retrieve the cargo.  Sometimes an airdrop is a planned exercise and sometimes it is a response to an emergency (for example, needed medical equipment).    The crew has to be trained and ready to go, so they practice in the summer. 

This time, the plane made three passes over the normal runway, circling between IceCube and SPT to the winter drop zone.  Then they changed directions and did three more passes over the summer drop zone (on the far side of the berms).  On one of those passes, they actually dropped two test bundles, each of which had a little parachute.   You can just barely see them in the picture below with the plane on the right (the bundles are on far left of the frame), and then clearly in the following picture.

After the first pass, the sky became hazy, and we could only tell when the plane was on its way back by the roaring of its engines.  Then it would pop out of the haze, and be right over our heads (watching from the observation deck of the station).