Laurel Chen
Welcome to Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

We are embarking on a new series of episodes as part of our focus on expeditions and the roles of individuals who are advancing science explorations in harsh environments. From polar regions, deserts, oceans, to space, our conversations aim to shed light on fascinating projects that help us understand our planet and make life on earth better.

I am Laurel Chen, a graduate student at Rice University pursing my masters of global medical innovation.

Recently I had an opportunity to speak with Linda Welzenbach Fries, a science writer and photographer who has been part of several expeditions in Antarctica. While working at the Smithsonian Institution she joined the Antarctic Meteorite Search program twice!

This spring we are featuring an exhibit of her photographs from these expeditions at the Rice University library and our podcast series will present conversations that provide details. You could see some of the photos on our series web page Longitude.site.

We start this episode with the serendipitous path that led Linda to Smithsonian first, then to her current role at Rice University.

Linda Welzenbach Fries
I am the science writer at Rice University in the Department of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences. And I got this job because of my previous career as a museum curator at the Smithsonian Institution where I curated meteorites. I am a geologist, that’s my background. And I started at the Smithsonian, in public programs, working on a brand-new exhibit on minerals, gems, rocks, and meteorites. From there, I was able to segue into my position in collections, specifically meteorites, and I did that for about 15 years. It was funny, because when I started in that position, I was asked whether or not I’d be willing to go to Antarctica, would this be something that I would be interested in? And of course, I said yes, because who doesn’t want to go to Antarctica? That was essentially a really good sort of way to appreciate the collection that I was managing, because 75% of the meteorites that are currently in the Smithsonian collection come from the US Antarctic meteorite program. That program is interesting in that it is an unusual collaboration between NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Science Foundation. It began in 1976-77 and has essentially been ongoing ever since. They’ve collected somewhere close to 40 or 50,000 meteorites as a part of that program.

The U.S. Antarctic meteorite program, known as ANSMET, goes to Antarctica, usually after Thanksgiving and spends about seven weeks on the ice collecting meteorites. It is run through a principal investigator at a university. They get funding currently from NASA. There are usually somewhere in the neighborhood of six to eight team members, all of them are typically scientists from the planetary science community. It’s a volunteer activity. No experience is needed, except you have to like camping remotely. No showers. You have to eat food that sometimes is about a year old because it takes that long for a boat to go from California to Antarctica in the offseason. Of course, everything’s frozen so it stores well.

Laurel
My next question was just how your education led you on the path that you are today. It really seems like you, you got a great opportunity to just go down there. That’s, that’s amazing.

Linda
So, the truth is, my background as a geologist is in sedimentology. I went to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and I was in the library. It was like January, late January, maybe early February, and I was leafing through a magazine called Geo Times. And in the back of the Geo Times Magazine, there was an advertisement to work at the Smithsonian Institution. I have wanted to be a geologist since I was about seven years old. My uncle was a mineral collector, and he gave me my very first minerals, and I would save all my pennies, and I would go to mineral shows, and I would buy minerals. And I used to go to the Smithsonian, you know, when I was a kid and look at the mineral collections, and I thought this would be such an amazing job. And so when I saw the advertisement in the back of Geo Times magazine, I was super excited. The date due for the application was in two days – now this is the early 90s – there is very little in the way of email. There was a telephone number. So I actually picked up the phone and I cold-called the number and I said, this is the job for me. And I talked to the person on the other side, who turns out was going to be my boss. I convinced her that I was the right person for the job. She said, fax me all your material, I will make sure that it gets to human resources in time. I waited many months. I didn’t hear whether I got the job until the end of May. I had defended my master’s thesis. I was ready, essentially to work in Detroit, Michigan when I finally got the call, and I and I said yes. And so I started working in public programs on the new mineral Hall, which is a dream job. I got to handle all the minerals and gems that are currently on display at the Smithsonian right now. And, working in with the minerals and working in collections is essentially what enabled me to segue into the meteorite collections manager curation position. And then the rest is history.

Laurel
That’s amazing. I’m so happy to hear that for you, in that how you really set yourself to do something when you were young and everything kind of fell into place, and I definitely am an appreciator of museums, especially natural history museum so and just to think that curators are behind the scenes who put those, sort of exhibitions together is just really fascinating to me. And we appreciate it from the viewers perspective, it’s always cool to see it come together.

Linda
Indeed, you learn a lot about actually how difficult it is to put a coherent exhibit together. How the selection process for all the minerals and the gems and how they fit into the story that you want to tell.

Laurel
Could you please tell us about what’s the history behind both the Antarctic project as well as the meteorite search project in laypersons terms?

Linda
Meteorites fall equally all over the planet. What is the planet covered with primarily? The ocean, so a lot of that material is lost. Antarctica is the largest continent that we have. It’s also been covered with ice for a very, very long time. And so, a lot of scientists have been doing work just studying ice and ice movement. And in 1969, there was a Japanese glaciologist, who spent a lot of time on the ice who actually found meteorites. And the meteorites were relatively close to each other, they were kind of clustered together. And yet they were a variety of different types.

Most meteorites that actually fall to Earth fall as single individual, or potentially as a shower of stones. The dynamics of actually an asteroid hitting? earth, and the cosmic velocity in which that it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere causes a lot of pressure to build up on that rock, and then that rock explodes typically, and rains down on the surface as a shower of stones, if it’s big enough. A lot of the smaller material just either burns up in the atmosphere, or if it’s coherent enough, it can actually just fall as one stone on the ground.

Well in Antarctica, what they sort of hypothesized was, in order to get a bunch of individual different kinds of meteorites that are all located relatively proximal to each other, and we’re talking just a few meters apart, there has to be a mechanism that concentrates the meteorites. They presented this information at a meeting. And one of the US planetary scientists was very intrigued by this. His name was Bill Cassidy. He thought, well, maybe I can get funding from the National Science Foundation to go and do my own search and test out this hypothesis, this potential concentration mechanism. And it took a couple of rounds of proposing, but he did get some funding to do a preliminary search. And he actually worked with the Japanese initially, and they were able to recover meteorites, and this was in 1976. Most proposals are a several year sort of award and he was able to go out several more times and collect more meteorites. He had a graduate student. His name was Ralph Harvey, who ultimately ended up becoming the principal investigator for the US Antarctic meteorite program, or ANSMET, and was able to successfully manage this program to the present day.

Antarctica, being at the at the south pole has a fair amount of curvature. And the ice as it builds up in the center part of the continent near the pole, basically, through gravity moves out towards the margins. And as it does this, we’re talking ice that several, you know, kilometers thick. And the meteorites that essentially have been falling on that ice equally over millions of years are carried up to the surface, and then are exposed. And in places where the ice kind of becomes stagnant, like it gets blocked by the mountain range. Those meteorites can accumulate, we can get hundreds or 1000s of meteorites in these really interesting little pockets of stagnant ice movement.

They have learned that these areas typically are blue ice. Blue ice is essentially ice in which has been compressed to the point where all the oxygen has been pushed out of it. And so it becomes very dark, and it re-radiates the blue color. They’ve used satellite imagery to look for these areas of blue ice, and then target their searches for these areas. And the US Antarctic meteorite program has been primarily focusing along the Trans-Arctic Mountain range, because that is proximal to both McMurdo Station flights and flights from South Pole. And so a lot of it is the infrastructure that is available to help them, you know, put them in the field, which is a very expensive and logistically difficult process.

We’ve been able to collect so many meteorites, [so] statistically, we’ve been able to identify new types of meteorites each and every year that we go because we’ve been able to collect so many. One thing that was really interesting is we found literally the first meteorites from the Moon and Mars from the Antarctic collections. The moon meteorites are the ones that helped us identify the first meteorites from Mars. The Apollo program returned all this material from the moon, so we had material that we could identify as being lunar, what’s more interesting, though, is because meteorites from the moon, basically come from all over the moon, we actually have pieces of the moon that are not sampled by the Apollo program.

Laurel
Wow, that’s super cool. I had no idea that you can learn so much from meteorites.

Linda
Meteorites are essentially snapshots from the earliest history of our solar system. Most of the material from the asteroid belt is residual material from when the planets were actively forming and evolving. They give us an idea of what maybe the earth was like, the moon was like, and what Mars was like, in the earliest history [of] their formation, because at present, Earth is still evolving.

Laurel
I like that. That’s a really good analogy. They’re quite literally pictures in time. And they’re their little windows into the past, and that you have them in physical manifestation.

Linda
And the really nice thing is, we haven’t collected them all. And each year that we go, we get one new type of meteorite that we’ve never seen before. And we all do this at a fraction of the cost of any kind of, you know, sample return mission from space.

Laurel
It seems like these searches are pretty collaborative, not only between NASA, Smithsonian and the National Science Foundation. I’m kind of curious what skill sets are essential when working on such a large mission like this and, and how do they work together at the end of the day, so seamlessly.

Linda
In any one of these this Antarctic meteorite program, there is the principal investigator, who has essentially been working in this program for a very long time, has a lot of experience working in Antarctica. Also included is a safety officer or what we call a mountaineer. That person has very specific skill sets that enable that person to make sure that everybody that goes to the ice remains safe.

The scientists that participate have no experience whatsoever. In fact, a lot of them have only worked on tiny pieces of meteorites and have no idea what an actual meteorite looks like. Some people have never been camping. But for the most part, I think everybody who goes is enthusiastic enough that regardless of their level of skill with outdoor experience, they learn a lot while they are there.

We do occasionally leverage the experience of NASA astronauts because they are physically qualified. There is actually a rigorous set of tests that everybody has to pass because there are no doctors or surgeons. And we are out in in a remote setting for a very long period of time. And so we want to make sure that nobody is going to have some kind of illness that may require extraordinary measures to get them out. Like, you know, bringing a plane in, or a helicopter, although a helicopter can only basically be used when the camp is within, obviously, helicopter range.

So, astronauts are nice because if somebody doesn’t physically qualify, and we’ve reached very close to the deadline where everybody has to get out in the field, we have them available. They also see it as an opportunity to train the astronauts themselves on how to work in isolated conditions, how to work well with others.

We sometimes include scientists from other programs. We’ve had scientists from Japan, scientists from China, and from other European countries who participate so that they can get a feel for what this program is, and maybe perhaps how to develop their own programs. And in fact, over the last decade, 15 to 20 years, there has been a Chinese Antarctic meteorite collecting program called CHINARE. There’s another one that is a Belgian focused, they actually work very closely with NIPR or the Japanese polar programs to collect meteorites. Euromet, was another one where there were the Italians and the British, I think.

Laurel
Sounds like a very, very international effort from what I’m hearing with all these places around the world. Super cool that you mentioned that.

Now, I’m kind of curious about the expeditions itself. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what a typical day usually looks like during the search and how long these expeditions usually are in general.

Linda
When you are selected to be a team member, the first thing you have to do is you have to physically qualify. From there, you’re given a list of clothing that you have to take with you. And there are weight restrictions. So, you are allowed to bring upwards of 75 pounds with you. And they want you to select clothing that will keep you warm and dry. The National Science Foundation as part of their polar programs will supply you with the primary cold weather gear or emergency cold weather gear or what they call ECW gear. That gear is actually issued to you when you arrive at the polar programs depot which is in Christchurch. You spend probably two hours trying a whole bunch of things on because it has to fit well. If it doesn’t fit well, you will get cold. And being cold is a very bad thing obviously in Antarctica.

So, you take with you like you know your long underwear that’s close to the skin, but then they will give you fleece, they give you pants or overalls. And then they give you a parka and they give you very special boots. That gear, believe it or not, is worn when you get on a plane that goes from New Zealand to Antarctica.

All of the US program participants fly from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Station Antarctica. That flight takes anywhere from five to eight hours depending on what plane you use. You wear all that gear. You’re inside this sort of essentially a cargo plane, which is not heated. You literally get off the plane and you step onto the sea ice. And that’s about a half an hour ride from where you get off the plane to McMurdo Station.

Once you’re there, you know the temperature- the weather- is somewhere in the neighborhood of like between 15 degrees Fahrenheit, to several degrees below zero. Then you assemble everything that you need, to go and camp out on what we call the Antarctic Plateau.

There is a specific set of equipment that you go and you collect. Everybody participates in not only selecting it, but packing it and getting it ready to be essentially loaded on a plane. And that includes things like your tent that you’re going to live in. These tents are called Scott tents. They’re canvas and wood. They’re double walled, they’re a nine by nine square at the bottom and then taper up to the top. It has these little vent holes at the top. This nine by nine tent, this thing called a Scot tent is essentially unchanged in almost 150 years. It’s crazy. The tent itself is open on the bottom, the rubber tarp goes directly on top of the ice, then the tent goes down on top of that. And then you literally just put in several layers of foam rubber and Therm-a-Rests, and you literally sleep in your sleeping bag right on top of those on top of the ice.

Laurel
Wow, talk about bare minimal harsh environment.

Linda
It is primitive camping at its absolute best. And then you heat the tent essentially with the stove that you cook on. And that actually can get the tent pretty nice and warm, it can get into the you know, maybe the mid 60s, maybe the upper 70s, a little bit warmer at the top of the tent. And then there’s air vents obviously to prevent any kind of gas buildup because you’re using liquid fuel to run your stove. Yeah, so in that nine-by-nine plan, one set of sleeping bags goes on one side, the other set of sleeping bag you there’s two people to attend. And so, both of us essentially lay out our sleeping bags on each side. And then all the cooking goes on in the very center.

Laurel
Like dorm living.

Linda
It is definitely like dorm living. Yeah, there’s pockets on the inside of the tents where you can store all of your gloves and pins and put pictures up in the center of the tent so that you can like see your loved ones. Going out into the field at the beginning of December and coming back at the end of January, it’s a long time to be living in a tent with one person, missing your loved ones.

If you’re an introvert, it’s a really great activity. If you’re an extrovert, some people sometimes have a little hard time seeing the same people day in and day out. It is very remote in the terms of the fact that there are no trees, you can’t really go outside and get away from people or go very far because it’s unsafe to do so. You know, unless you’re moving around a lot, you can get cold. So, you have to find other ways to entertain yourselves. These days, they now have solar panels that will allow you to charge your computer so you know everything stays warm enough you can actually watch you know movies in your tent with your computer. The first time I went we only had one satellite phone among all of us because of the time and energy it took to charge it up. The second time I went every tent had a satellite phone. The last time I went was in 2006 and I know that each year I you know the equipment gets lighter and smaller and it’s more efficient to charge it.

Laurel
What usually happens afterwards, how are the meteorites stored? And eventually how does that reach? When you’re back at the Smithsonian or wherever you want to start curating an exhibit for others? Can you walk through that process from when collected them to curation?

Linda
Absolutely. Once we’ve collected them, they are shipped frozen on a boat from McMurdo Station to California. From there, they are shipped all by themselves in their very own refrigerated tractor trailer to Houston, and NASA. At the Johnson Space Center, [they] process them in essentially the laboratory that used to process the Apollo lunar rocks. And it is now almost exclusively for Antarctic meteorites.

The meteorites are frozen, until they are put into what they call a dry nitrogen cabinet. It dries the meteorites and keeps any additional contaminants from getting into the meteorites. We are looking to try and preserve the meteorites for a long period of time to make them available for both science and exhibition- less so for exhibition. More so for science. We want to make sure that we preserve their pristine nature. NASA does all of sort of the initial sort of physical characterization, they weigh them, they take pictures of them, they record what happens to the meteorites. As they are processed, they remove a small chip. And then that small chip ultimately goes to the Smithsonian for classification. And then the meteorites get stored in their in their collections until essentially a scientist requests them. NASA creates a publication that it comes out twice a year, and then scientists can read that publication and look at the new meteorites that have been found and characterized for that year. And they can put in a request. And then twice a year, there is a committee that sits down and evaluates those requests. And then they tell NASA go ahead and send this amount of material to the scientist for additional study.

Laurel
What are some of the most important lessons, surprises or challenges that you’ve had over the years through expeditions that you’ve gone on?

Linda
I think the first and probably the most fundamental is that I learned the importance of teamwork in survival. Going to Antarctica is obviously a very special and unique opportunity. It is amazing to me that we have basically built a foundation or a framework in which people can go and do research and explore and learn new things, essentially in environment that is very, very difficult to live in.

One thing that always occurred to me, I actually really enjoyed the periods of time where the weather was so bad that we couldn’t actually go out and do the work. And yet, I would still go outside and just marvel at the fact that I was probably the first human to step foot in this particular place. I was the first human to survive in this place. I liked sort of that baseline feeling of existence, that nothing else mattered except that we had to depend on each other, that we were able to live in this place for a brief period of time and experience what we experienced and know that we’re actually contributing to, you know, a really important knowledge base and helping other scientists to advance their science and ultimately to learn a lot more about where we come from, how our solar system evolved, and help us to find places like Earth perhaps elsewhere in the universe.

[music]

Laurel
We hope you enjoyed hearing about science and research activities in Antarctica. Please visit Longitude.site for the episode transcript and find out other episodes in this series.

If you are in Houston this spring, please visit our accompanying exhibit at the Rice University library featuring photographs from Dr. Fries collection. Our exhibit will be available for display at other university libraries upon request.

If you are a college student interested in leading conversations for our next podcast series, please write to us at podcast@longitude.site.

Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.