ON A remote Antarctic mountain top near the infamous Pole of Inaccessibility, in bitter winds and icy temperatures comparable to those on Mars, a daring and perilous rescue mission has been successfully executed.
Who could have been stranded in such a place? Turns out it was a telescope, named Boomerang. It was built to fly above Antarctica attached to a giant weather balloon, measuring the cosmic microwave background left over from the big bang, which provides us with vital information about the structure of space-time. But on its second flight, in January 2003, this was one boomerang that didn鈥檛 come back. The balloon lost altitude and was blown off-course before crash-landing 3000 metres above sea level, nose-down in the snow.
The mountain can be reached by plane, but flying there is a risky venture. Even in summer, temperatures at that altitude rarely rise above 鈭�50 掳C. If the plane鈥檚 engines switch off in this bitter cold, they might not restart. A US search-and-rescue team was able to land at the site a few days after the crash to recover data tapes, but scientists on the project feared the bulky telescope would be left there forever.
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This month, however, the rescuers risked a return journey and brought Boomerang home, to the eternal gratitude of the scientists. Though it came back in pieces, the telescope could be flying again within a year. 鈥淭hey have been heroes,鈥� says cosmologist Paolo de Bernardis at La Sapienza University in Rome. Coming soon to a cinema near you?