The specific mention of the box of hard drives in the press release, was because there are no flights in/out of South Pole (where the 10m South Pole Telescope i

The specific mention of the box of hard drives in the press release, was because there are no flights in/out of South Pole (where the 10m South Pole Telescope is) for ~9 months in winter, and the Internet access there is very expensive and not very high bandwidth.