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In early September 1992 NASA's RF Compatibility Labs at Goddard Space Flight Center tasked BFEC, who operate the labs for NASA, to provide data links to and from Antarctica via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRSS) and to provide a Payload Operations Control Center (POCC) at GSFC to operate Carnegie Mellon Universities robot "Dante" remotely. BFEC's Steve Thompson was assigned to the project and to construct the TDRSS link shown in the photos on this page. Steve accompanied the unit to Antarctica to install and operate the system in December of 1992.
The objective of the robot "Dante" was to crawl into the Mt. Erebus volcano for scientific study. However, the robots fiber optic control cable developed problems early into the experiment and the project was terminated. The TDRSS link however operated flawlessly throughout the testing.
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![[Image] , 57360 byte(s).](tdrs_linker.jpg)
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