Professor Julián Rodríguez Ferreira together with the student Elián Calderón Quintero represented the UIS in the eleventh Colombian Antarctic Expedition in which for the first time a project of the country arrived so close to the geographic South Pole and in which they became the first Colombian scientists to be in the Union Glacier Polar Scientific Station.
In this way they continued with the radio astronomy project that Rodríguez Ferreira started in 2023 during his first participation in the expedition that Colombia carries out annually in the white continent.
“Our research is about radio astronomy in these conditions at the South Pole and so studying a very specific science of signals close to the origin of the universe. We are very interested for now in a very instrumental stage in understanding how our radio telescope, which is our sensor, interacts with the environment around it, that is, the signals that interfere with it, but at the same time how it interacts with the place,” said Rodriguez Ferreira, professor at the School of Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering.
He had previously been part of the last two scientific expeditions that Colombia made to the south of the planet, a fact that has served as experience for his work; however, on this trip he was able to investigate in the Union Glacier Polar Scientific Station, a milestone for Colombian science.
“A very important parameter that made this trip very special was the place where we went because we were on a glacier above the ice cap, below us there were between 800 and 1,000 meters of ice of the polar cap and that electromagnetic interaction between our instrument and the surrounding environment was something very important,” explained the professor.
In addition to the radio telescope, a meteorological and air quality station was taken to measure atmospheric variables such as temperature, pressure, humidity, and solar radiation at the site, and to carry out studies to install solar panels and micro-grids to operate the equipment on a semi-permanent basis.
“This trip to Antarctica was really an experience that I will not forget and it was nice to be in such a remote place with the people we were with. All the objectives of the missions we were going to carry out were met and now begins the process of making a rigorous evaluation of the data and evaluation of the project and thus leave the instruments for at least a full year taking data, either at the O’Higgins base or at the base of the Union Glacier,” said Elián Calderón Quintero, a student of the Master’s program in Telecommunications Engineering.
Thanks to the results obtained, the university received four quotas for this phase of the project, so the student David Gonzalez and professor German Chaparro are already in the south of the planet to continue what Rodriguez and Calderon have done and thus leave the name of the UIS high in terms of scientific research.
The Colombian Antarctic Program is coordinated by the Colombian Ocean Commission, an intersectoral advisory, consultation, planning and coordination body of the National Government in matters of National Ocean and Coastal Space Policy and its different related, strategic, scientific, technological, economic and environmental issues related to the sustainable development of the Colombian seas and their resources.
Within its vision, the Colombian Ocean Commission plans to incorporate the country’s oceans in an efficient and sustainable manner to national development and the well-being of Colombians by 2035.
The first expedition took place in 2014-2015 and its purpose was to materialize Colombia’s objectives in Antarctica and maintain a permanent presence in that continent.
