Arctic team: 'London, we have a problem'

1 ANSWERS

1. Brett
   

   After enduring ferocious weather, it has emerged that British explorers studying the Arctic are struggling with a series of technical problems.
   
   A portable radar device, known as Sprite, designed to make millions of measurements of the ice thickness, has been dogged by breakdowns and uncertainties.
   
   Another instrument, SeaCat, meant to measure the temperature and salinity of the water beneath the ice-cap, has malfunctioned as well.
   
   The expedition's organisers insist that other research - such as regular drilling through the ice - has meanwhile been carried out successfully.
   
   The radar system, known as Sprite, is dragged behind the sledge of expedition leader Pen Hadow and is meant to gather data about the ice for transmission via satellite to researchers.
   
   But when the expedition, the Catlin Arctic Survey, set off in late February, it encountered an unexpected wind chill as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius, and the technology failed.
   
   Cable break
   
   I understand that on the fifth day in these conditions, one of the radar system's cables simply snapped. On the ninth day it became clear that this had led to all the cables breaking.
   
   So with the team's early progress anyway hampered by the weather, the Sprite only gathered data over a total period of seven hours of trekking in the expedition's first 18 days.
   
   A resupply flight, which landed last month, collected the device for repairs back in the UK, and that work is now complete.
   
   But support staff are still having trouble accessing the ice data stored inside it.
   
   The same resupply flight also delivered a replacement radar to the expedition but it's not yet known how well it has functioned over the past few weeks or if its data can be retrieved.
   
   Another resupply flight on Wednesday brought the team the original Sprite device, now repaired, together with the communications system.
   
   Expedition organisers are now hoping that at last, after nearly 40 days on the ice, the radar data can be gathered and transmitted as planned.
   
   Assuming they can retrieve any data collected earlier, they hope to have lost only 13 days' worth of measurements in all - the period the original Sprite unit was out of action.

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