ATO take off at 01 am towards Thule Airbase.

Skier 51 ATO take off

During the evening of Saturday the temperatures barely dropped to -3 deg C. It was decided to stick to the decision of a 0100 am departure but to attempt as light a skier as possible. All pallets with retro equipment where off loaded and fuel was returned to the NEEM camp. The plan was to fly via Thule because the distance is shorter and thus less fuel would lighten the Skier. Four rockets (ATO’s) where mounted on each side of the Skier. The Skier reached the needed speed to fire the ATOs using half the skiway and the skier was just air born when the ATO’s  burned out. The cheers in camp and in the skier were loud! THANKS to Captain Wynn for a very outstanding take off.

What we have done today:
1.  Departure of Skier 51 at 0100
2.  Cancelling planed Skier mission to NEEM with ETA 0930
3.  Grooming skiway
4.  Monitoring of water vapor
5.  Opening inclined entrance to drill trench
6.  Pulling long drill boxes up from drill trench
7.  Digging and sampling Japanese pit
8.  Oil shift on generator
9.  Pouring sand in the 411 deep 2011 S1 borehole
10.  Mounting solar panels on D-frames for the GLISN project
11.  Celebrating ‘Saturday night’

Weather: Broken overcast, Temp. -7 °C  to -3 °C , wind 0 to 5 knots from SW turning to NW at midnight.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen