Plato-R: A New Concept For Antarctic Science

PLATO-R is an autonomous, robotic observatory that can be deployed anywhere on the Antarctic plateau by Twin Otter aircraft. It provides heat, data acquisition, communications, and up to 1 kW of electric power to support astronomical and other experiments throughout the year. PLATO-R was deployed in 2012 January to Ridge A, believed to be the site with the lowest precipitable water vapour (and hence the best atmospheric transmission at terahertz frequencies) on earth.(1-4) PLATO-R improves upon previous PLATO designs that were built into ten-foot shipping containers by being much smaller and lighter, allowing it to be field-deployable within 2-3 days by a crew of four.