A video chat with an astronaut and running in Antarctica

Astronaut Christina Koch is onboard the International Space Station (ISS). She served a few winters at the South Pole and here at Palmer Station and is on track for the longest time in space for a US female next February. Last Saturday night the 20 of us here at Palmer had an almost one hour video chat with her on her day 184 onboard the ISS. It was really exciting to talk to her since I spent almost 30 years working on the space shuttle orbiter's avionics systems. We all had lots of questions as she gave us a tour of the ISS. Christina is shown here in her spacewalk suit.

On a hike up the glacier.

To the right is a few volunteers to help me dig out the glacier radio sled.

A beautiful windless day at the glacier sled.

A fine shoveling team.

Palmer Station above my head.

I recently presented a three part slideshow on my daughter's and my bicycle ride around the world.

Running the glacier in snowshoes. 

I run the station hill road (to the right middle) on a regular basis. It's nice that it's light now because most of the season I run with a head torch. 15 up and down laps gives me about 5 miles and 800 total feet of elevation.

Palmer Station is Iced in!

A massive iceberg.

A colony of giant petrels on the other side of Hero Inlet.

Hero Inlet and most of the surrounding sea iced in.

Sometimes the sky is on fire.

Glacial blue.

Arthur Harbor iced in.

Views from a recent hike.

Skiing and Snow Machine Riding

More beautiful sunsets.

Skiing in Antarctic on several inches of fresh ungroomed powder. Sweet!

Making tracks.

A rest stop.

As I add these pix on Sunday September 1 my family and home in Cape Canaveral, Florida is in the track of the most powerful storm on the planet this year. Winds of 180mph and storm surge of 20 feet plus. My house is only 600 feet from the beach.

A Friday morning commute to the glacier radio sled.

A five minute drive instead of a  35 minute snowshoe hike.

The radio sled is about 1.5 miles from the station on top of the Marr Glacier.

The glacier radio sled need some snow shoveling.

A storm last night blew is a few feet of snow.

Post holing with the largest snow shoes makes for a difficult hike.

I help out Chef Lisa almost daily by working at the pot sink while she cooks. I washed all this during one session and now sending through the Hobart Sanitizer.