Thanksgiving here is celebrated on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the States. 

For most people on the STO-2 team, it was a normal workday. However, a few of us started our day with the McMurdo Turkey Trot, a 5k race. People showed up in costumes and had a great time despite the first half being uphill and into a 20 mph wind! STO-2 supplied four runners out of 108: Kate from the gondola team, and Craig, Kay, and myself from the instrument team.

After the race, we went back out to the Long Duration Balloon facility to work for a few hours before coming back to prepare for our 7 p.m. seating in the McMurdo galley. People generally dress up a little from their normal workday clothes. The meal was a Thanksgiving feast! We chose from four different kinds of salad, root vegetables, green-bean casserole, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, and four different kinds of pie and cheesecake!

After dinner, we played a few games of "Settlers of Catan" at the coffeehouse and then danced the night away at a laser-light dance party.

TAGS:STO-2, ANTARCTICA, MCMURDO, ASTRONOMY, ASTROPHYSICS, BALLOONING

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jenna Kloosterman, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow

  Jenna Kloosterman is a NASA postdoctoral program fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, researching new instruments for radio astronomy. For the past two years, she has worked on the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory II, or STO-2, a balloon-born observatory designed to study how stars are born. During the Antarctic summer of 2011-2012, she spent 10 weeks at McMurdo Station for STO’s first flight and returns in November 2015 for a second. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and both a master’s degree in astronomy and a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arizona. Outside of work, she enjoys yoga, hiking, and modern dance, as well as serving as co-chair of the Caltech Postdoc Association.