Jessica Hodges, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, was another first-timer on the flight to Antartica headed by a team from McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma.
For three weeks, Hodges will work at the South Pole, testing sensors encased in large glass balls that will be buried in 9,000-foot holes drilled into the ice.A group of universities and the National Science Foundation are conducting the $272 million IceCube project to detect subatomic particles as they pass through the Earth from deep in space.