Communication in Antarctica

I am constantly amazed at the current level of communication between the vast snowy wastes of Antarctica and the outside world.

Felicity Aston, who was the first woman to cross the Antarctic alone , an unbelievable achievement, took a combination of Twitter and iPadio. She sent messages from her satellite phone to TwitterMail and her comments appeared as Tweets. iPadio apparently creates podcasts and transcribes them to blogs. It also uploads audio and text files to a website. Felicity just had to ring a number on her satellite phone and talk.

She carried a Yellowbrick Tracker which bleeped her position every eight hours.

In my research on the early Antarctic heroes the fact that strikes me most is their total isolation. They were literally cut of from all lines of communication to the outside world. Scott had an early form of internal communication in that when he set out on his final journey and realized  that he was without Queen Alexandra’s flag. he was able to communicate with Base from the first depot. Mawson broke new ground when his expedition up a communication network between Macquarie Island, Australia and the Antarctic.This painfully ground into some action. The American, Admiral Richard Byrd ,was the first to really master communications in his huge expeditions. Details of his flight over the South Pole were broadcast in Times Square N.Y.

There are stupendous scientific developments in Antarctica now and communication is one of them

Tags: Admiral Richard Byrd, Felicity Aston, Flight over South Pole, iPadio, Macquarie Island, Mawson, Queen Alexandra, Satellite Phones, Times Square, Twitter