Science support

Science technical support

The Science Technical Support section of the Australian Antarctic Division develops the technology and scientific facilities needed to answer important scientific questions. The equipment and facilities we provide may have to work for 10 years continuously out on the high Antarctic Plateau in temperatures down to minus 80 degrees Celsius, or at 6000 m below the Southern Ocean.

• The electronics laboratory designs, manufactures, modifies and repairs electronic instrumentation systems for use in the Antarctic. Some of the weather stations we have made are still sending back information after over 10 years unattended on the Antarctic Plateau.
• The instrument workshop designs, manufactures, modifies and repairs mechanical instruments for everything from moving mirrors in a LIDAR system, with accuracies of billionths of a metre, through to making drills to sample ice a kilometre from the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet.
• Laboratory services maintains the laboratories and their equipment at the Antarctic stations, on ships, and at our headquarters in Tasmania.
• Marine Science Support provides technical support for marine science. This includes everything from running a fleet of small boats, to publishing data collected at sea.