Subsea Internet cable to Antarctica proposed

The US government’s National Science Foundation (NSF) is investigating the possibility of building a cable connecting the largest US Antarctic Program research facility, McMurdo Station, with either New Zealand or Australia.

The main scope of the installation “is to provide advanced high-speed, low delay telecommunications” to McMurdo Station. However, the cable “will contain additional point sensors and/or distributed sensing infrastructure, enabling for the first time myriad investigations across a broad range of scientific disciplines,” the NSF said.

The NSF “seeks information from the public to evolve the development of the Antarctic SMART Cable,” the call for information says.

It continues: “NSF requests information regarding the subsea cable route that both minimizes the risk to the cable and maximizes science research potential, the range of potential science sensors to include, as well as their geographic distribution, the locations of powered cable branching units for future sensor cable build-out or undersea observatory-style point sensor arrays, concepts for the incorporation of existing or promising distributed fiber sensing techniques, and suggested paths to catalyze the necessary technology to develop such a cable system.”