On April 23, Wang Yuchen, a 2019 PhD applicant from College of Electrical and Power Engineering, TYUT, who had participated in China’s 36 Antarctic expedition, returned to Taiyuan after completing all the assignments.
It was the first Antarctica expedition undertaken by two icebreakers “Xuelong” and “Xuelong 2” at the same time. The expedition started on October 22, 2019. On board Xuelong, Wang sailed about 30,000 kilometers during the 168-day expedition. On November 28, 2019, Wang arrived at the inland departure base near Zhongshan Station. On December 9, he departed from the base together with other 16 expedition team members. On December 15, the expedition team arrived at China's Taishan Research Station, 520 kilometers away from Zhongshan Station. On February 10, 2020, the team returned to Zhongshan Station after staying 57 days on the inland ice sheets.
During his trip from Zhongshan Station to Taishan Station, Wang used the ice radar system developed by Professor Dou Yinke and his team at TYUT to study again the internal structure of some inland ice sheets in Antarctica. During his stay at Taishan Station, Wang used the satellite remote control and monitoring platform developed by his research team to install a remote iridium integrated control system, a remote image monitoring system, and a heating and defrosting system of the Aurora Imager in the high-altitude physical observation cabin of Taishan Station; and he installed and commissioned the fluxgate magnetometer and the induction magnetometer. After completing the above assignments, Wang volunteered to participate in other infrastructure works at Taishan Station, including the mounting of wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels complementary to the microgrid, the construction of video surveillance and PLC monitoring and control systems in the main building of Taishan Station, conducting the ice radar detection in the area around Taishan Station, and obtaining the internal structure map of the ice sheets near Taishan Station etc. At present, the remote iridium integrated control system in the high-altitude physical observation cabin of Taishan Station is operating stably, and the monitored data and images can be transmitted back to the polar remote monitoring platform of TYUT in real time.
As the third postgraduate student of TYUT landing on the Antarctic ice sheet, Wang has successfully accomplished his mission. During the expedition, Wang has overcome many difficulties, including working in a temperature of minus 30 degrees, long-term field work in the polar daytime and high-altitude hypoxia etc., to carry out various tasks. During the expedition, Wang and his team members were deeply concerned about Wuhan and China after learning about the outbreak of coronavirus epidemic, and cheered for Wuchan and China remotely from Antarctic. On April 22, after the “Xuelong” and “Xuelong 2” arrived in Shanghai, the health and quarantine personnel conducted nucleic acid tests for all the 189 team members, and the test results were all negative.
After a short period of time off, Wang will collate and analyze with his research team the data collected. Using the data about the ice sheet height and ice core obtained from the expedition, the research team will analyze the temporal and spatial changes in the accumulation of shallow ice and snow on the Antarctic ice sheets so as to provide a theoretical basis for deducing the future Antarctic ice sheet movement and climate change. It is revealed that Professor Dou Yinke and the scientific researchers of the Polar and Engineering Equipment Research Institute led by him will start to develop new polar survey equipment soon.
