This evening, around 10 PM local time, we celebrated the arrival of the first core, which arrived by helicopter from the drillsite some 35 km away. The helicopter arrived just at sunset, but the scene was lit up by the glare of the core paparazzi (aka. scientists so excited that they braved the cold to photograph the event).
Work will now begin around the clock. Those of us lucky enough to work the night shift have a long night ahead of us! Sunset was at 11 PM, over two and a half hours ago, as I write this. However, it still looks like dusk. Sunrise is at 4:30 AM. It seems it won’t ever get truly dark while we’re down here.
