Just as sports teams need to come together, the IceCube Upgrade team had to do the same. That was one of the main goals during our August training session. Most of the team members preparing for deployment met for a couple of weeks to get ready for the summer — this included the drill team, installation team, and management team. The room was filled with a mix of backgrounds: some had been to Antarctica many times over the past decades working on the original observatory, others were newer to IceCube, and a few had never set foot on the continent before. Whatever our experiences, each of us has an important role to play for the season to be a success. It was inspiring to see people with such different experiences learning from one another — whether a freshly graduated PhD student or a driller with decades under their belt. Beyond learning our skill sets, we got to know each other as people, and many friendships were formed along the way.
Before diving into the details of our training, let me tell you a bit more about the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded IceCube Neutrino Observatory. IceCube is a cubic kilometer of instrumented ice at the South Pole.
