ANITA terminated

ANITA's flight was terminated last night at about 2am.  The payload reached the ground not long after at 83 27.92S, 154 57.46W.  Not the perfect location for recovery!  It had looked as though the balloon would head straight towards Ross Island, so that we would be able to cut down pretty close by, but a change of course to the south, towards mountainous terrain, meant that the flight had to be terminated early if we were to be certain of an easily recoverable location.  

The problem now is that with with payload over 300 miles away we'll have to use longer range aircraft and probably have less ground time to actually get back all the bits we need!  Oh well!  Hopefully it'll mean a nice trip out of McMurdo for me though, I'm only an alternate for the trip so will only go if there's space (or if something unfortunate should happen to Brian).

Other than that I really haven't done anything of note this past week besides searching fruitlessly for penguins three times a day out at Hut Point.  The supposed "glut" of blog entries was misleading; I lied!

With a little luck though I'll have some sweet photos of a smashed up ANITA to post in a few days.  Now where's my chain-saw...?