The Atqasuk facility, which was part of the larger ARM North Slope of Alaska (NSA) observatory, was installed in the summer of 1999 off of a road near the Atqasuk Airport and operated through 2010. Located approximately 70 miles south of Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), Atqasuk is adjacent to the Meade River.
Atqasuk has an economy that is largely based on subsistence fishing and caribou hunting. The community infrastructure includes a store, gas station, school, health clinic, firehouse, community center, power plant, water plant, and airport. Travel to and from Atqasuk is typically by scheduled bush airline. There are at least four scheduled flights to and from Atqasuk from Utqiaġvik each day. Local people also travel by snow machine.
With no landlines running to Atqasuk (or to Utqiaġvik for that matter), this meant that all communications, both voice and data, were through commercially supplied satellite links. Data were transferred through a 56K line, which was sufficient for the instrumentation bandwidth load.
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