The Antarctic Terminal at Christchurch, New Zealand

At Christchurch, travelers to Antarctica are equipped with cold weather gear. Most US polar logistics are managed by the Raytheon company. You actually don’t need to bring very much of your own clothing. Passengers bound for Antarctica have to “suit up” for the 8 - hour flight over some of the worst ocean in the world. Flights are routinely cancelled due to bad weather, or they take off and turn around mid-flight. Some people have gone to the air terminal, all dressed up, every day for a week before catching a flight.

These are cargo planes : noisy and not very warm or comfortable.

Planes from New Zealand land on the ice near McMurdo Station.

McMurdo Station. The segmented, tan building (46,500 square feet) at center is the Albert P. Crary Science & Engineering Center, built in the 1990s to replace several aging research facilities. Beyond the lab are dormitories (brown buildings) and the research ship Nathaniel B. Palmer in tiny Winter Quarters Bay. Beyond the bay are Hut Point and McMurdo Sound. McMurdo is the logistics hub of most of the US Antarctic Program. Most cargo and all fuel come to McMurdo by one cargo ship and one tanker per year.

Scott’s was the second expedition to reach the South Pole, a few weeks after Roald Amundsen. Scott and his companions perished in a blizzard on the return journey, a few miles from food supply. Near McMurdo Station is the well- preserved 100-year- old hut of Scott’s expedition. This view shows the “science lab”.

Mt. Erebus, Antarctica’s only active volcano, dominates the view at McMurdo.

The flight from McMurdo to the South Pole crosses the Transantarctic Mountains.

The South Pole is entirely supplied by air. Since weather at any time of year can turn bad in minutes, supply lines are often delayed. Planes never turn off their engines while on the ground at the pole.

Antarctica is a place where machines and people are working right at the edge. Small problems can create disasters at 50 degrees below zero.

This is the same crash, 10 years later. Although it hardly ever snows at the pole, it’s very windy and flat, so snow drifts around anything that presents a bump.

High School teacher Jason Petula at the crash site, December 2001

All “routine” air traffic to the pole takes place during the austral summer, during October through March. During the winter, flights are that much more dangerous and performed only in emergencies. The last flight out every March marks the beginning of a long winter for the 40 or so people who winter over at the South Pole.

South Pole Air Traffic Control Tower : on skis, ready for towing.

The dome was originally constructed on top of the snow...

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is named to commemorate the Norwegian and English explorers who were the first humans to reach the pole in December 1911 and January The research station has been in continuous operation since Its population during the winter isolation (February-October) is about 27, and the summer population can exceed 180. Astronomy, astrophysics, atmospheric studies, glaciology, and seismology are performed here. The station is supplied entirely by air from McMurdo.

In 2001, the dome is almost completely covered with drifted snow.

This is a cutaway painting of the land under ice. The thickness of the antarctic ice sheet averages 2,160 meters and at one point is 4,776 meters — just short of 3 miles. This ice is 90 percent of all the world's ice; it is 70 percent of all the world's fresh water. Portions of the bedrock are below sea level.

The last bit of daylight, before winter….

Flags are set out to mark paths. Whiteouts can occur any time of year, and can bring visibility down to a few yards.

At the South Pole, there’s just 1 Sunrise & 1 sunset per year. The long, very dark night, and the very high altitude, and the very thin air due to the earth’s spin, and the cleanest air on earth combine to offer spectacular astronomy opportunities. These pictures are of the Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights. Charged particles, mostly protons, from solar storms enter the upper atmosphere along the Earth’s magnetic field lines, exciting Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules to produce glowing, moving displays.

Sunrise, 6 months later...

It’s not a biodome. It’s not clear. In fact, it’s not even heated.

The dome keeps drifting snow off the real buildings.

Logistics at the South Pole station are very tight. There are beds for about 230 personnel, and the National Science Foundation tries to make sure that every one of them is in use during the very short summer season when useful construction can take place. Conditions at McMurdo are relatively a lot nicer...

These are giant rubber fuel bladders, lined up in the long archway you saw near the dome. The station relies for its very survival on the generators supplied by this fuel.

There is a greenhouse. It doesn’t supply food as much as just a welcome break from the white of the snow and the blue of the sky.

This dormitory is newer than the dome, and can be raised on stilts to keep it from being buried.

These are called Jamesways, and represent the bottom end of the South Pole Real Estate Market. They’re cheap and portable : they can be dragged around by tractors, or flown in intact. At the South Pole, these are used for summer accomodations for temporary staff like teachers...

Staying in a Jamesway, one can make lots of new friends quickly...

Each spring (that’s October), the Jamesways have to be dug out and prepared for the arrival of summer personnel.

A massive construction effort is underway to replace the dome (which is actually the 2nd South Pole Station) with a new station on stilts. To build the station requires 6 planes a day, and over 100 workers during the summer. This has stretched the resources at the station very thin.

230 people maximum, and 100 of those are construction workers, so going to the pole any time before the new station is finished is a huge privilege. The science projects have really been cut back until the work is finished, hopefully by 2005.

The copper pipe marks the exact spot of 90 degrees South latitude as determined each January using the satellite-based Global Positioning System, or GPS. In the mid-background are flags of the original 12 signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty. In the background is the geodesic dome housing facilities of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

Nearly everyone who goes to the pole takes this picture at the “ceremonial” pole. The true or “geographical” pole is somewhere nearby, and is marked every so often. But the 2 miles of ice under the pole is moving, so it’s handy to have a “fake” pole for photo opportunities !

Shouldn’t that be glued down ?

The Pole station and the Pole have a constant stream of visitors and important people. Some politicians fly in for only an hour or two, long enough to have their pictures taken. Guitarist Henry Kaiser visited Antarctica as part of the NSF’s Artists & Writers program. He recorded a piece of music using the pole as a slide for his special cold-proof plastic guitar, which he left at the station.

Every New Year’s Day, South Pole Station personnel stage a “Race Around the World”. It’s about a 1/4 mile loop around the flags, and some run, some ski, and some snowmobile. It turns out to be harder than it looks. The air at the Pole is thin, because of the 10,000 ft altitude. Also, because of the Earth’s rotation, the atmosphere is thinner at the poles (and thicker at the equator). One guy who got panting on his first day at the Pole froze the roof of his mouth.

Most astronomy and meteorology work is done in the “Dark Sector”, well away from the living quarters, airstrip, and generators.

CARA (Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica), an NSF-funded project headed by Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago, and involving other institutions, takes advantage of the extremely clear (because it is cold and dry) atmosphere at the South Pole to make observations in a number of wavelengths, particularly the infrared.

The South Pole is the best place on earth to do certain kinds of astronomy. If you want to study infrared radiation from distant sources, you must have your instruments very cold, to improve their sensitivity. At the South Pole, liquid helium is imported to do the final cooling.

The South Pole station has developed into one of the world’s leading astronomical observatories. Cutting-edge research is linked to the outside world through satellites. 100’s of universities around the world play a part in this multinational endeavor. One project, AMANDA, will eventually use a cubic kilometer of the ice itself as a kind of telescope, looking for tell-tale signatures in the ice that betray supernovae in distant galaxies.

This is the “Clean Air Lab” in the dark sector. The Pole has the cleanest and driest air on Earth, because of limited exchange with the rest of the atmosphere.