P1246341517etOcC

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Astronomy at South Pole

• Present experiment DASI, AMANDA, AST/RO, Viper,
  ASTO, and many more.
• Future 8 meter sub-millimeter telescope,
  IceCube, and many more.
• Facilities South Pole Station, Mapo, DSL, IC
  Counting House, AST/RO, cryogenics, and skilled
  technicians
• First rate facility for astronomy!!!

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AMANDA IceCube

• Neutrino telescopes for the study of wide range
  of astrophysics and particle physics phenomena.
• Detect Cherenkov radiation from muons as they
  pass through the very clear, dark deep ice under
  the South Pole.
• IceCube will have 80 strings of 60 PMTs, between
  1400m and 2400m - 4800PMTs!

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Amanda
Skiway
IceCube
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Dark sector
Skiway
AMANDA
Dome
South Pole
IceCube Outline
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Data

• Because of the high rate of down going muons
  compared to up going neutrinos, large amounts of
  data collected!
• Communications to the South Pole intermittent,
  and low bandwidth compared to what we would like.
• Reduce data quantities by low level processing
  using small HPC cluster.

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Network Requirements

• 3 basic types of data transfers.
• High priority, close to instantaneous 24/7.
  Examples being Super Nova, and Gamma Ray Burst
  notifications. Science.
• Medium priority, bi-directional with latency on
  the order of hours. Operations.
• Low priority, high volume, uni-directional with
  latency of days. Data recovery.

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Resources available in Antarctica

• Communications, high speed satellite (TDRSS,
  GOES, MariSat, ANARE Sat), high volume satellites
  (TDRSS Ku-Band), Iridium, InMarSat, Microwave,
  VHF, HF.
• 3. End user interfaces with TCP/IP.
• 2. Transport such as Ethernet or PPP.
• 1. Hardware uses above resources.

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Options

• While working in Antarctica ideally we would have
  access to the same resources we have in the
  laboratory.
• Adapt different forms of communications to
  produce the equivalent of lab environment.
• Or utilise technologies to give us modern high
  speed communications and networking.

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Challenge

• Forms of communications which are exotic compared
  to what is considered normal.
• Limited resources, especially in the form of
  dedicated technicians. Field camps require
  multi-skilled people not totally occupied.
  Stations have limited personnel.

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Summary

• Cutting edge science requires modern network
  connectivity and computing resources.
• Antarctica forces creativity in utilising
  networks, and computers due to limited resources
  such as people, access, and power, and diverse
  communications.
• Is it possible to pool talent efficiently to this
  end, even at an international level?