Some details
The Nathaniel B. Palmer (from now on, the NBP) travels around the southern ocean and only goes to McMurdo once every few years. They normally operate from Punta Arenas in Chile. This time around, the grantees will be studying "the how, why, and when the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS) unpinned from Ross Bank to assess ice sheet and ice shelf behavior during a recent unpinning event." McMurdo is on Ross Island, attached to the Ross Ice shelf, in the Ross Sea. The NBP is enroute to McMurdo right now.
I will be leaving on 2-16 (in two days!) and I will do the same travel that I have done for prior deployments. I fly to Christchurch, and for the first time it will be a direct flight from SFO, which is a nice change. We get a covid RAT test, pick up our extreme cold weather gear and then fly to McMurdo on 2-21 or 2-24. The ship leaves McMurdo on 2-25. The science part is 30 days and then a nine or ten day transit back to Lyttleton Harbor in New Zealand.
Here is a map of the route of the ship during this cruise. Red lines indicate the path the ship will follow while gathering whatever data they need. I'm not sure how this will display but on my screen now McMurdo is in the lower left, under a button that says 'edit'.
The woman who was supposed to go on this cruise has been giving me some training, though it's not structured and she has to peel off to work whenever a task comes up. She is heartbroken to not be going. She has a variety of health issues and the polar medical people have decided she is not allowed to deploy in waters (or on land) below 60 south latitude.
What exactly will I be doing on board? I really don't know. The person who interviewed me said I would mainly be unlocking user accounts, or resetting passwords or telling people where their printouts are. Anna has been telling me I need to manage the very limited satellite bandwidth, using a tool I have never seen before. She asks me, do you know Sophos, xiplink, GX - FBB, veeam? No. Can I fix a registry entry so that location services work on a scientific instrument, can I image a laptop using microsoft configuration manager? No and no.
There will be another network admin on the opposite shift so I'm not totally responsible for the IT systems. I have also been told that the boat is not going to sink based on what I do or don't do. That's a relief.
There is even less internet than we had at the south pole. I don't yet know how the ship connects, though that is part of my job. We could be without internet for hours or days at a time. I have vaguely been told that email may work, but it won't be real time, expect delays.
I'm taking a leap into the unknown and it's scary and exciting.