“The first time [I went to Antarctica], my first impression was what Buzz Aldrin said about the Moon — this ‘magnificent desolation.’ It felt like that. It’s magnificent, but it’s so desolated, which is what makes it so interesting.
“You need to be a good team player 24 hours a day — literally, because you share rooms with the people you work with. Either you work really well as a team and love your teammates, or you hate each other — and it’s impressive how everyone always gets along. I always say, you get there with colleagues and you leave with friends for life.
“And then the other part of it is, you feel like one of these explorers at the beginning of the 20th century. Actually McMurdo Station, which is where we were, still has the hut that was built by Robert Falcon Scott when he did his expedition to the South Pole. It’s still there, the same way it looked in 1902 — still intact and you can go in and visit.
“So the second thought I had when I saw that was: we’re putting a cutting-edge radio telescope on a balloon, which looks like very old technology. You see this hut from the explorers and you really feel like you’re doing astronomy like in the old days, which makes it more romantic. You feel like an early 20th century explorer.”
— José Siles, Project Manager and Technical Lead, Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths (ASTHROS), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Image Credit: Courtesy of José Siles
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos