Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

The new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (January 2006)

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is a US research station in Antarctica . It was named after the two South Pole pioneers Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott and is located at an altitude of 2,835 m on the inland ice of Antarctica , a few hundred meters from the geographic South Pole . The research station was founded in 1956 for the International Geophysical Year and expanded several times.

history

The first camp on the South Pole was Amundsen's Polheim . The first station was only founded 45 years later and existed from 1957 to 1975 ( Old Pole ). The newer main building, erected in 1975, was located under a geodesic dome with a diameter of 50 meters and a height of 16 meters. In the Antarctic summer of 2005/06, after 15 years of planning, development and construction, a completely new station was completed for 150 million US dollars. The extreme temperatures, heavy snowdrifts and extreme dryness made special demands on the new building. After the completion of the new station, the old dome was completely dismantled in the Antarctic summer 2009/2010.

An area of more than 26,000 km² around the station has been designated as a specially managed area of Antarctica No. 5 ( Antarctic Specially Managed Area No. 5) according to the environmental protocol of the Antarctic Treaty since 2007 . By coordinating all human activities, the administration should ensure that the scientific, ecological and historical values of the area are preserved in the long term.

Cargo plane Lockheed C-130 of the United States Air Force at the South Pole (2004)

Research content

Research in the fields of glaciology , geophysics , meteorology , astronomy and astrophysics is carried out in the station. Among other things, there is the neutrino - observatory IceCube , the precursor to the experiment AMANDA builds. German universities and institutes are also involved in both experiments. In addition, the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) and Keck-Array are operated here to observe the CMB .

Life on the ward

The annual average temperature is −49 ° C, with fluctuations between −13 ° C and −82 ° C. Around 130 researchers work at the station during the Antarctic summer, while most recently around 50 spent the winter at the station. This makes the station the second largest Antarctic station after the McMurdo station . The station is supplied with Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft , which, however, can only take off and land between October and February, and by tractor transports over the South Pole Traverse . With six hibernations each, the two German scientists Steffen Richter and Robert Schwarz are the current record holders for most hibernations at the Amundsen-Scott station. There is a greenhouse at the station, in which the researchers grow up to 27 kg of vegetable food per week.