The Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) is an experimental, real-time, high-resolution numerical weather prediction capability for the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). It includes the WRF-ARW dynamic solver and the three-dimensional WRF-Var data assimilation (DA) system. The system is running in real-time at NCAR/MMM. The major goal of the DATC AMPS Testbed is to support data assimilation efforts in this system. The current work is as follows: (a) keeping the AMPS DA system up to date; (b) tuning the background error covariances for AMPS; and (c) evaluating and, therefore, ingesting of new satellite observations into AMPS.