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24 January 2008
New South Pole Station Continues 50-Year Scientific Mission
Climate, astrophysics are part of research program at bottom of the world
Washington -- Just more than 50 years after an 18-man team of U.S. Navy personnel and civilian scientists spent the first winter at the South Pole in 1957, a sleek, new elevated structure has opened on the coldest continent to support a range of international investigations.
The $153 million Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through the U.S. Antarctic Program, is the third research facility on the site since 1957. The W-shaped miniature city includes a NASA plant-growth chamber to grow fresh food for the scientists and support staff.
NSF’s Antarctic Research Program includes 150 people during the three-month austral (Southern Hemisphere) summer and 50 people during the remaining nine months. NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) and the Department of Energy also fund researchers at the South Pole, as do nations from around the world.
The station, NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher told America.gov, “is part of the U.S. contribution to the Antarctic Treaty and our cooperation with the world in trying to understand more about the science of our Earth and using the South Pole as a way to gain that information.”
Signed in 1959, the Antarctic Treaty provides the legal framework for the region beyond 60 degrees South latitude, according to the U.S. Antarctic Program Web site. The treaty reserves the region for peaceful enterprises, promotes scientific investigations and international cooperation, requires an annual information exchange about activities and encourages environmental stewardship.
Representatives of 28 voting nations and 17 nonvoting nations meet regularly to discuss treaty operations. Negotiated agreements include environmental protection measures for expeditions, stations and visitors; waste-management provisions; a ban on mining; establishment of protected areas; and agreements for protecting seals and other living marine resources.
OUTPOST UPDATE
The Amundsen-Scott station, built on top of a constantly shifting continental ice sheet nearly 3.2 kilometers thick, is named for Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who reached the South Pole in 1911, and British Royal Navy officer and explorer Robert Scott, who reached the South Pole in 1912.
The old geodesic dome of the station, operational since 1975, was 50 meters wide at its base and sheltered three two-story prefabricated buildings that contained a library and recreation center, science spaces, single-room berths for up to 23 people, a galley, a post office, a photographic darkroom and a meeting space. The buildings were heated; the domed enclosure was not.
There was also room under the long steel arches for a dispensary, biomedical facilities, vehicle repair and maintenance shops, diesel generators, a storage space for helium used in weather balloons and a small gymnasium. But 30 years in below-freezing temperatures, wind and snow took their toll.
The new structure is elevated and faces into the near-constant 16- to 24-kilometer-per-hour wind that flows above and below the station. The fast-moving winds blow snow out from under the station, reducing the need for manual excavation. For removing snow that does accumulate, the building sits on 36 hydraulic-jack columns that can raise the 6,000-square-meter structure in 25-centimeter increments.
UNIQUE LABORATORY
Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent; the continent least hospitable to most terrestrial life forms; and cut off from the rest of the world by a circulating Southern Ocean current. But the same conditions make the South Pole a unique laboratory for studying astronomy, air and atmospheric ozone, seismic science and life sciences.
The Amundsen-Scott station’s South Pole Telescope, for example, is a collaboration among nine U.S. and Canadian institutions. Taking advantage of the exceptionally clear, dry and stable atmosphere, the 10-meter telescope will map large areas of the sky to explore the nature of dark energy, an unexplained phenomenon responsible for the observed acceleration in the expansion of the universe.
Eight kilometers from the station, scientists supported by USGS and others record ground vibrations from earthquakes around the world. Seismographs have been operating at the pole since 1957, but the newest station in the Global Seismographic Network -- the South Pole Remote Earth Science Observatory (SPRESO) -- records the quietest vibrations on the Earth, up to four times quieter than those ever observed.
SPRESO, funded by NSF, is a collaboration between the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology consortium of universities and the USGS.
More information about the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and access to an onsite webcam are available on the NSF Web site.
More information about the Antarctic Treaty is available on the U.S. Antarctic Program Web site.
