Jessica Cherry spends her favorite moments looking at Alaska from above. As a new recruit for a class of astronaut candidates, she may someday view the world from miles higher. Cherry, 37, is a pilot and professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center and Institute of Northern Engineering. She flies small […]
It’s late May, 118 miles from the Arctic Circle. Time for a walk to work. The season has changed since February, the last time I wrote about walking through the North Campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The North Campus consists of more than 1,000 acres that begins a few steps south of my […]
Natalia Ruppert was at the dentist when she heard the ping of a text message on her phone. When she rose out of the chair, she noticed a magnitude 4.2 earthquake happened near Noatak. “Aftershock,” she thought, as she remembered her recent visit to the northwest Alaska village of about 500 people. Ruppert, a seismologist […]
Just over the hill from Fairbanks is a broad, swampy lowland pocked with lakes and sliced by crooked brown streams. You could hide Anchorage in Minto Flats, home to more moose, beavers and northern pike than people. The spongy surface of the flats is good for a few things: making mosquitoes and hiding the effects […]