A remote science station in Antarctica forced to close over the polar winter by a dangerous ice chasm is completely empty of human life — a ghost base of sorts. Even so, its vital science experiments keep on ticking.
It is the first time that important science experiments at the Halley Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf have been operated remotely, thanks to a high-tech electricity generator that will run continuously for nine months in the below-freezing conditions.
The generator and the science experiments that depend on it — including measurements of the ozone hole over Antarctica and global monitoring of lightning activity — passed the middle of the southern polar winter (complete darkness) a few days ago, on June 21
That’s already more than four months of continuous operation, including times when the temperature was more than minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius), and the polar winds were blowing snow at up to 50 mph (80 km/h) , said Thomas Barningham, the project leader for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
“That is a significant milestone for us, so we are very pleased with the progress of the new power system,” Barningham told Live Science.
The Halley scientific research station has been operated by the BAS on the Brunt Ice Shelf since 1956, and rebuilt in the same location several times.
A crew of 14 scientists and technicians previously kept the station’s science experiments going over the polar winter. But Halley has been closed over the winter since 2017, because the BAS decided it would be unable to rescue staff by aircraft or ship if the ice shelf split away.
As a result, instruments like the Dobson photospectrometer, which measures the ozone layer in the atmosphere, were switched off for the winters of 2017 and 2018, because the existing diesel generators couldn’t run for more than a few weeks without people.
