Hyper-Insulated Instrumentation System to Support Year-Round Research in Polar Regions

极地地区全年的科学研究受到周围环境的严重挑战。极低的温度、六个月的黑暗、强风和结冰，给远程仪表站在无人值守一年或更长时间的情况下运行带来了严重的问题。因此，许多研究项目经历了数据丢失或简单地无法在更大的区域或时间段内获取数据，导致我们对这些关键区域的知识在时间和地理上存在很大差距。能够部署一个能够在这些情况下幸存下来并在一年或多年内无人值守地收集数据的仪表化程序包，将有助于填补这些空白。此外，在某些情况下，根据地点的不同，即使是每年访问偏远地点的风险和后勤成本也可能非常可观。提供能够运行多年的仪器支持，将使研究界能够规划能够以合理费用和较低风险得到支持的数据收集网络。这种类型的系统还可以支持在夏令营发达但冬季无人居住和无法进入的地点进行全年研究。该奖项为建造和测试“超绝缘仪器系统”提供支持，该系统以创新的方式综合了许多最新的发展。它将为极地地区的科学研究基础设施做出贡献，为仪器有效载荷提供一个温暖的动力环境，使其在零下60度(或多或少)的温度下埋在浅雪坑中时‘被动’设计续航时间达10,000小时。绝缘将由一个大容量金属杜瓦瓶提供，就像现在生物技术中用来保存液氮样品的那样；热储存将由150升特别配制的石蜡油的熔化潜热提供；电能将由最近为军事应用开发的锂离子电池提供。太阳能电池板的增加将提供多年的运行，通过在夏季对系统进行电力和热能充电。Iridium调制解调器将提供通信，以报告系统状态并传输存储在固态存储器上的科学数据摘要。该系统将被设计成用直升机或‘双水獭’飞机运送到偏远的野战地点，操作人员不超过两人。该系统将在南极南极站进行为期一年的开发和测试。出于测试目的，该系统将配备一系列通常用于冰川学研究的温度探测器，但该系统的明确设计将能够容纳几乎任何数据收集设备的“有效载荷包”。一名工科本科生将参与设备的热和数据通信设计以及现场测试，该项目将构成该学生本科生论文的一大部分。

Year-round scientific research in Polar Regions is seriously challenged by the ambient environment. Extreme low temperatures, six-month darkness, high winds, and icing, create substantial problems for remote instrumentation stations to operate unattended for a year or more. Consequently, many research projects experience loss of data or the simple inability to acquire data over extended areas or periods of time, leading to substantial temporal and geographical gaps in our knowledge of these critical regions. The ability to deploy an instrumentation package that could survive these conditions and gather data unattended for one or multiple years would help to fill these gaps. Additionally, the risks and logistical costs of accessing a remote site even on a yearly basis can be very considerable in some cases, depending on location. The availability of instrumentation support capable of operating for multiple years would allow the research community to plan data-gathering networks that could be supported at a reasonable cost and with less risk. This type of system could also support year-round research at locations that have well-developed summer camps, yet which are unoccupied and inaccessible during the winter. This award provides support to build and test a 'Hyper-Insulated Instrumentation System', an enclosure which synthesizes a number of recent developments in an innovative manner. It will contribute to the polar regions scientific research infrastructure by providing a warm, powered environment for an instrumentation payload, with a 'passive' design endurance of 10,000 hours when buried in a shallow snow pit at -60 (more or less) C. Insulation will be provided by a large-capacity metal dewar flask as now used in biotechnology for preserving samples in liquid nitrogen; thermal storage will be provided by the latent heat of fusion of 150 liters of specially-formulated paraffin oil; electrical energy will be supplied by lithium-ion batteries as recently developed for military applications. The addition of solar panels will offer multi-year operation, by recharging the system electrically and thermally during the summer. An 'Iridium' modem will provide communications to report on system status and transmit summaries of scientific data stored on solid-state memory. The system will be designed for transportation to remote field sites by helicopter or 'Twin Otter' aircraft, and handling by no more than two people. The system will be developed and tested with one year-long deployment at South Pole Station in Antarctica. For testing purposes the system will be equipped with an array of temperature probes as commonly used for glaciology research, but the system will be explicitly designed to be able to accommodate almost any 'payload package' of data-gathering equipment. An undergraduate engineering student will be involved with aspects of the thermal and data-communications design and field testing of the equipment and the project will constitute a large part of the student's undergraduate thesis.