November 16, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Bid to traverse Antarctica in six weeks

LONDON, November 16, Graphic News: Led by an insect-like ski vehicle that’s half-aircraft and half-sled, a team from Imperial College London will attempt the fastest ever land-crossing of Antarctica. If successful, it will be the first expedition to cross Earth’s southernmost continent in both directions.

The Moon Regan Transantarctic Expedition will attempt the 5,790-km (3,600-mile) journey, travelling from Patriot Hills on the western coast of Antarctica to the South Pole before heading north through the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range to the Ross Ice Shelf and McMurdo Sound. Three days later they will retrace their journey to Patriot Hills.

The 11-strong team will take three vehicles on the journey, equipped with monitoring equipment and sensors for an extremely wide range of science. Two of these vehicles are huge, six-wheel-drive mobile labs converted from Ford Econoline trucks. The other is the Winston Wong Bio-Inspired Ice Vehicle (BIV).

The one-man BIV rides on three broad skis and is powered by a Rotax 914 aircraft engine which runs on low-emission E85 bioethanol. The vehicle was conceived, designed and built by Lotus Engineering, and has undergone several upgrades after testing in Sweden to bring its performance up to the levels needed for Antarctica. Equipped with ground-penetrating radar to detect hidden crevasses, the agile BIV is tasked with keeping the two Science Support Vehicles (SSVs), carrying the other 10 team members, on a safe and secure route.

The expedition takes its name from co-leaders Andrew Moon and Andrew Regan. Moon is an expert on polar history and navigation, while Regan has travelled to both the North and South Poles. The other team members are scientists, communications experts, experienced snow drivers and a cameraman.

The terrain the expedition will move over is some of the most treacherous on Earth. The surface of the Polar Plateau -- the 3,000m-high, 1,000km-wide highland in the centre of the continent -- is sculpted into “sastrugi”, hard-packed snow and ice ridges. “The wind forms these waves and some of them are huge,” science leader Robin North, explained. “The support vehicles may look big, but they’re like little toy cars moving around in that landscape.”

Five years in the planning, the expedition will carry two main sets of experiments from eight departments at Imperial: one will look at how human physiology reacts to the extreme conditions of the polar region; and the other will study the impact of global industry and air pollution on the Antarctic environment. The team will analyse snow surface chemistry to determine the accumulation of heavy metals and persistent organic compounds and measure pollutant concentrations in the atmosphere.

If the Moon-Regan team meet their six-week target, they will break the Antarctic crossing record. The first crossing, achieved by Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1958-59, used adapted Massey Ferguson tractors and took 99 days. The second, by Ranulph Fiennes’ 1980 Transglobe Expedition, used air-supported snowmobiles and took 67 days.
/ENDS