White Mars: living far away from any form of life

Antarctica

• Discovered at the beginning of 1800
• First winterover in 1900
• South Pole reached in 1911
• Moon landing: 1969 ...
• 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice
• The coldest continent on Earth: -89.2°C

Antarctica

• A continent bigger than Europe
• The highest continent of the planet: average of 2km over the sea level
• It holds approximately the 60% of all fresh water of the Earth
• Total winter population (February to November): ~1000 people
• More than 90% of that population lives on the coast
• Only three stations on the Antarctic plateau: Concordia (Europe, 13 people), Vostok (Russia, 13 people), Amundsen-Scott (USA, 45 people)

Antarctica

Concordia Station

• French/Italian facility: European outpost on the Antarctic plateau
• More isolated than the International Space Station
• 13 people unattainable for 9 months (from February to November)
• 1200 km from the closest base on the coast
• Temperature can be lower than -80°C (yearly average -53°C)
• No life around, no Sun for three months in a row
• Altitude ~3200m over the sea level: lack of oxigen
• In the middle of the largest desert on Earth: extremely dry air

Concordia Station

Concordia Station

Scientific Research - Astronomy

Scientific Research - Atmosphere

Scientific Research - Seismology

Scientific Research - Glaciology

Scientific Research - EPICA

Scientific Research - EPICA

Scientific Research - Human Biology

Scientific Research - Human Biology

What about the electricity?

Power supply

• Rotation of 3 power generators: two of 150kW and a small one of 100kW
• Maintenance every 200/250 working hours for each of them
• During the winter we consume ~5000 liters of fuel per month
• We put additives to move down the freezing fuel temperature to -55°C
• We store the fuel outside the base, and we keep 45 cubic meters always warmed, so they are immediately available
• How do we get all this fuel?

Crossing Antarctica: traversa

Crossing Antarctica: traversa

• Twice or three times per year, exclusively during the summer season (in winter time Concordia is unattainable)
• 13 people, ~1200km, ~15 days to reach Concordia from the DDU French station located on the coast
• The caterpillars drag containers with food, fuel and all heavy objects
• Of course, we make a huge party when they arrive

The food - containers

The food - usual dinner

Last Sunset, beginning of May

The long night: 97 days of darkness

The long night: 97 days of darkness

The end of the night

The end of the isolation (9 months)

What about Python?

• The most used programming language at Concordia: astronomy, atmospheric physics, glaciology, Raspberry Pi, ...
• Everything is complicated because at Concordia there are 512kbit/s of bit rate (VSAT satellite communication). That's why:
• We have to work without Internet (only e-emails with strict policy)
• Unsubscription from mailing lists: python-ideas, python-dev, ....
• No contribution to open source projects, no GitHub, ...

In spite of the hard working conditions ...

The last notable contribution to science

• A USA telescope on the Antarctic plateau is part of the EHT (a VLBI network of eight ground-based radio telescopes)
• Because of the small bandwith they were not able to send the data
• Correlation performed at the end of the winterover
• Behind the software scenes of the first black hole image there is Python: matplotlib, numpy, pandas, astropy, requests, scipy, sympy, ...

For more pictures and stories

• https://www.facebook.com/marco.buttu
• https://www.instagram.com/marco.buttu

Credits

Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA)

Institut polaire français Paul Émile Victor (IPEV)