Catch Up 1: The Halley VI Build Season

This summer season at Halley was the penultimate build season of the Haley VI project. There were over 100 people staying at Halley V during the summer period. All being fed watered and entertained. That's a strain on a base that was never designed to cater for that amount of bodies. The Laws platform is the primary facility at Halley V. The platform can accommodate around forty personnel and also contains the catering facilities, support services and their associated workshops, the communications hub, some office space and, of course, the bar. In addition to this space there is the Drewry Annexe that only operates during the summer season. The Drewry features accommodation space and catering facilities only. These two buildings were still not enough to cater for the numbers required for the Halley VI build so temporary containerised accommodation was implemented to take up the slack. 

The Drewry annexe being moved into place at the beginning of the season (Photo: Kirk Watson)

All these extra bodies were necessary as the 2010 / 2011 build season saw numerous skilled teams working on many different aspects of the Haley VI build. There was a team working across at the Halley VI site preparing it for the imminent arrival of it's modules. This team was also responsible for erecting the masts, arrays and cable catenary's that would be required for the science that will eventually be implemented at Halley VI. 

The Southern Hemisphere Auroral Radar Experiment (SHARE) array under construction at the Haley VI site (Photo: Unknown)

Teams of tradesmen were employed at the Halley VI construction site at Halley V to complete the modules exteriors and as much of their interiors as possible. Another major task to be completed this season was the implementation of the hydraulic systems that would enable the module legs to be jacked up and down to enable the raising of the new base as and when necessitated by snow accumulation.

The module legs can be extended and the modules raised as snow accumulates

Each module was then towed the 16 kilometres from it's construction site at Halley V to it's new home at the prepared Halley VI site. With the blue modules weighing in at a hefty eighty tons and the big red 'Module A' tipping the scales at a whopping two hundred tons this final phase presented arguably the biggest challenge to the project. Some individuals speculated that Module A would be the heaviest single item ever to be towed across Antarctica. Could something that big and heavy be supported by the snow and ice without it digging in to the very surface that it was travelling on? With the expertise of BAS and Morrisons construction on the job the task of moving the big red one the necessary 16 kilometres was achieved with apparent ease. The image of the monstrous Module A being moved is one that will stay with me for some time. 

Module A being moved from Halley V to it's new home at the Halley VI site

As the modules arrived at the Halley VI site they were arranged in their final configuration. The final arrangement and connection of the modules was one of the many Antarctic firsts that the project has had to contend with. It was conceptually and, obviously, conceivably possible but what would it actually take to join all these modules together and make a functioning Antarctic scientific base out of them? The Halley VI base, as a concept, has never been tried in Antarctica and it's realisation is a feather in the cap to all the individuals who have been involved with the project in whatever capacity. The completed configuration of Halley VI is definitely an impressive sight.

The assembled Halley VI base in the Antarctic evening light