Antarctica · season 2026/27
SouthPing — student-built weather probes for the Drake Passage and King George Island.
A school project is building three satellite weather probes and sending them south with an expedition: two to Antarctic research stations, one to drift across the Drake Passage. The vessel departs Ushuaia on 15 November 2026.
A student lead in Texas and a project lead — the student's parent. One mentor: Jason K. Brogden, Dean of Science Instruction at Founders Classical Academy and Director of the Lynx Science Academy, who guides the scientific method.
Founders Classical Academy of Prosper, Texas (USA), and a university that runs Antarctic expeditions and has offered to cooperate — the agreement is not signed yet. The project is bilingual and international.
The drawings, schematics, code and data are published openly: the instruments can be rebuilt by anyone, and the data are free to use. Code is Apache-2.0, everything else CC-BY-4.0 — please credit SouthPing.
With the support of
FireBeetle 2 ESP32‑E
The probe's computer: it wakes, reads every sensor, stores the reading and goes back to sleep
Fermion BMP581
Air pressure — the mission's main barometer, on the carrier board
SparkFun Micro BMP581
A second barometer, plugged into the GPS, cross-checking the first
SparkFun BME280
Air temperature and humidity
DS18B20 waterproof probe
Water temperature on the drifting buoy, ground temperature on land
SparkFun SAM‑M8Q GPS
Where the probe is, and the exact time
Voltaic P123 solar panels
In the crown's pockets, so the probe charges in any orientation
Adafruit bq24074 charger
Charges the cells from the panels, and holds off in the cold, where charging would harm them
Adafruit MAX17048
Fuel gauge: the battery's voltage and charge, sent home with the readings
Li‑ion cells
The battery pack that runs the probe when there is no sun
RockBLOCK 9603
Iridium satellite modem: sends the readings home from anywhere on Earth
Maxtena M1621 antenna
The modem's antenna, through the top of the hull, facing the sky
Photographs: the manufacturers' own — DFRobot, SparkFun, Adafruit, Ground Control, Maxtena and Voltaic — with the backgrounds removed. Every part, and how it is wired: the parts book
Four scientific questions, from the safe one to the bold one — each builds on the one before. The scientific programme, in full
We place our probe next to a professional Antarctic weather station for a whole season. Every hour, both measure the same air — so we learn exactly where we err and by how much. After that the probe is no longer a gadget: it is an instrument with a known accuracy.
The Drake Passage is one of the least-observed places on the planet, and air pressure there is precisely what weather forecasts lack most. Our buoy drifts through it, reporting 4 times a day — data points that otherwise simply don't exist.
Wind is driven by pressure differences. One barometer on shore, one at sea — and the difference between them reveals the wind over the passage: a wind speed from two barometers and zero anemometers. Then we check whether the world's weather model agrees.
An underwater "parachute" couples the buoy to the water — its GPS track becomes a map of the strongest current on Earth. A water thermometer catches the boundaries between cold and warm water: crossing a front shows up in two independent signals at once.