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

极地全年科学研究受到环境的严重挑战。极端低温、长达6个月的黑暗、大风和结冰，给远程仪器站在无人值守的情况下运行一年或更长时间造成了严重的问题。因此，许多研究项目经历了数据丢失或简单地无法在较长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存在重大的时间和地理差距。部署能够在这些条件下存活下来并在一年或多年无人值守的情况下收集数据的仪器包的能力将有助于填补这些空白。此外，在某些情况下，即使每年访问远程站点的风险和后勤成本也可能非常可观，这取决于位置。能够运行多年的仪器支持的可用性将使研究界能够以合理的成本和较小的风险来规划数据收集网络。这种类型的系统还可以支持全年的研究，这些研究地点有发达的夏令营，但在冬季无人居住和无法进入。该合同为建立和测试“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发展。它将为极地地区的科学研究基础设施提供一个温暖、供电的环境，为仪器有效载荷提供“被动”设计，当埋在-60℃（或多或少）的浅雪坑中时，其耐久时间为10,000小时。隔热将由一个大容量金属杜瓦瓶提供，目前用于生物技术中保存液氮样品；热储存将由150升特殊配方石蜡油的融合潜热提供；电能将由最近为军事应用开发的锂离子电池提供。增加的太阳能电池板将提供多年的运行，通过在夏季对系统进行电力和热充电。“铱”调制解调器将提供通信，报告系统状态，并传输存储在固态存储器中的科学数据摘要。该系统将被设计为通过直升机或“双水獭”飞机运输到偏远的现场，并且不超过两人操作。该系统将在南极洲的南极站进行为期一年的开发和测试。为了测试目的，该系统将配备一组通常用于冰川学研究的温度探测器，但是该系统将被明确设计为能够容纳几乎任何数据收集设备的“有效载荷包”。工科本科学生将参与设备的热学和数据通信设计以及现场测试，该项目将构成学生本科论文的很大一部分。

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.