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October
31, 2006
From the United States' Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station,
astronomers use sophisticated telescopes to peer into
the depths of space and create images of the universe
in its infancy. Scientists use of one of the world's most
sensitive seismic stations to record rumbles through the
Earth's crust produced by earthquakes. And they can use
samples of the Earth's purest air as a baseline to study
atmospheric chemistry.
Fifty years ago, on Oct. 31, 1956, a tiny U.S. plane
made that science possible when it landed on the ice sheet
at the southern end of the world, 9,300 feet above sea
level. That landing will be commemorated at a ceremony
today at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola,
Fla. The ceremony is scheduled to include a telephone
call from NSF Director Arden Bement to personnel at the
South Pole.
The commemoration will coincide with a newly launched
webcam that will allow the worldwide public to see what
conditions confront scientists at the bottom of the world.
Available through a Web special report on the NSF site
at: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/index.jsp,
the webcam displays a live image of the research station
as well as local weather data and other information.
Background
On Oct. 31, 1956, at 8:34 p.m. local time, the first
aircraft ever to touch down at the South Pole skied to
a halt atop the Antarctic ice sheet at 90 degrees South
latitude. The U.S. Navy R4D, piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Conrad
C. "Gus" Shinn, had been christened Que Sera
Sera, the title of a popular tune that won that year's
Academy Award for Best Song.
The lyrics, in retrospect, were curiously appropriate
to all that followed at the South Pole, both later that
day and in the half-century since:
Que Sera Sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see.
Immediately after the plane halted--with engines running
to avoid a freeze-up (a practice still followed to this
day)--U.S. Navy Adm. George J. Dufek., commander of Operation
Deep Freeze, stepped out onto the ice, along with pilot
Douglas Cordiner, to plant the stars and stripes at the
Pole. They were the first to stand there since Briton
Robert Falcon Scott did more than 40 years before. Norwegian
Roald Amundsen had beaten Scott in his race to the Pole.
Amundsen's party survived the 800-mile return trip, Scott's
did not.
Others had flown over the Pole. Most famously, Navy Adm.
Richard E. Byrd, was the first in 1929. But none had ever
landed. No one even knew precisely what the challenges
would be or if they could be overcome. In that sense,
Shinn's touchdown foreshadowed Apollo 11's moon landing,
13 years later.
Dufek stepped into a landscape almost as unfamiliar.
"It was like stepping out into a new world. We stood
in the center of a sea of snow and ice that extended beyond
our vision," Dufek wrote in his 1956 memoir Operation
Deep Freeze. "How deep that ice lay beneath our feet,
no one has yet determined. Bleak and desolate, it was
a dead world, devoid of every vestige of life except us."
After 49 minutes on the ground and a risky take-off,
made even more complicated when the plane's skis initially
stuck to the ice, the men left the Pole toreturn to what
is now McMurdo Station, NSF's logistics hub in Antarctica.
That first landing was followed almost immediately by
"Seabees," U.S. Navy construction workers using
airdropped materials to build the first permanent station
at the Pole. A team, co-lead by scientist Paul Siple and
Navy Lt. John Tuck, Jr., began the first winter ever spent
at the South Pole in March of 1957 as part of the global
series of observations carried out in the International
Geophysical Year (IGY).
At the time of the landing, Dufek wrote, the wider world
was consumed by the conflicts of the Cold War raging in
the Middle East and in Hungary.
But, he also pointed out, in Antarctica, soldiers, sailors
and airmen were working for peace. "Our victories
would be quiet ones in the service of knowledge; our "beachheads"
were the stations at the South Pole and elsewhere in the
Antarctic. The "occupation forces" that would
follow us as soon as the bases were built and ready would
be teams of trained scientists. Their only opponent would
be the unknown."
In the intervening years, even more has changed at what
was the site of Shinn's difficult landing and where now
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station rises from the ice.
Aircraft arrive at the station many times a day between
early November and mid-February, carrying vital cargo
to complete the construction of the third and newest scientific
station at the South Pole, as well as to build newer scientific
instruments.
The planes that deliver the goods today are flown by
crews of the 109th airlift wing of the N.Y. Air National
Guard. Their ski-equipped Hercules LC 130's dwarf Que
Sera Sera in many ways.
Now, where relatively primitive stations were set up
to take weather and other measurements, a sophisticated
telescope a cubic kilometer in size and designed to detect
infinitesimally small particles called neutrinos is being
built into the ice sheet itself. Other massive radio telescopes
are being built to scan the skies of traces of images
of what the universe looked like in its infancy. Laboratories,
carrying on the pioneering work of IGY in an unbroken
scientific chain, monitor global air quality and seismic
waves.
But despite the changes of the past 50 years, all who
fly the route from McMurdo Station to Amundsen-Scott,
scientists whose discoveries drive the missions, owe a
debt to the crew of Que Sera Sera.
In 2006, the nations of the world are poised to recognize
the 50th anniversary of IGY--which itself marked the beginning
of the modern age of Polar exploration--by mounting a
fourth international Polar year (IPY), beginning in 2007.
None of it could be considered without air support.
"Establishing South Pole base, named IGY South Pole,
was only one of our many jobs on Operation Deep Freeze,"
wrote Dufek 50 years ago. "But it is a symbol of
the expedition to us. Beyond the strange and alluring
beauty of the mountain ranges, the valleys and glaciers
that lifted from the Ross Sea, lies this high plateau
of frozen solitude. What are the secrets that men will
learn from it in the years to come?"
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National
Science Foundation -
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