The Cold Truth: Why Antarctica is More Challenging than Space
This blog provides a detailed narrative about life at the South Pole, exploring the extreme conditions, the challenges faced by researchers, and the unique scientific opportunities that this isolated continent offers.
ENGLISH LANGUAGES
1/24/20255 min read


Life at the South Pole: A Harsh Reality
There's no doubt about it—the South Pole is home to Antarctica, the continent where nature just doesn’t cut humans any slack. It’s the coldest, most remote, and most desolate place on Earth, yet despite all these challenges, people have been living here for centuries. But the question is, how? MTV once featured this in a video, highlighting just how massive Antarctica is—big enough to fit all of America and India together! Just imagine, 98% of this gigantic continent is covered in deep snow.
Extreme Conditions
In Gahri, there's nothing but snow for 5 kilometers deep. The temperature here can drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius, but once or twice a year it does get a bit warmer. Even then, it only goes up to minus 12 degrees Celsius because the temperature stays below freezing all year round. That's why the snow never melts. Every year, Antarctica adds about two inches of snow. While that might seem like a small amount, over millions of years, those two inches keep piling up, creating layers of snow.
It's not just the cold and the temperature that make life tough here; Antarctica has almost no humidity. Normally, we have about 40% to 80% water vapor in the air, which is great for human health and the ecosystem. But in Antarctica, the humidity level is just 0.03%. That’s why skin diseases and dehydration are super common here. Plus, the South Pole is at an elevation of 980 feet above sea level, which makes it really deadly.
Life at the South Pole Station
It's not exactly made for people, but for most folks, the elevation makes things a lot tougher. Overall, Antarctica wasn't built for humans or any living creature, yet people are still here, and the only reason is research. Just like space isn't designed for humans, but we still send people there for research purposes, scientists are also sent to Antarctica for the same reason. This is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, an American base where there are about 150 people in the summer and fewer in the winter.
There are a total of 45 scientists and staff here, and the only way to get here is by plane. It’s not possible due to the deep snow, and the runway isn’t made of concrete or tar, but rather something you find a lot of here: ice. Yes, ice! They roll over it to compact it so that planes can land. Plus, pilots need special training to land here because these runways aren't your typical ones; they can be really slippery, especially for cargo planes.
A special landing gear is used because cargo planes are really heavy, and if their landing gear has tires, they can get stuck in the snow during landing. The South Pole American Station was first built out of wood in 1956, but it quickly got buried in the snow. In 1974, they upgraded it to a giant igloo, and the whole base lived inside that igloo. But this American experiment also failed because every winter, the igloo ended up getting covered in snow, thanks to Antarctica at the South Pole.
In some places, the sun shines for six months straight, so there’s no night, and then for the next six months, it’s all night with no sunlight. Because of this, during the six months of constant night, you can't take the igloo out of the snow, which means the staff has to wait another six months. They have to dig it out, which takes time and extra fuel. In 2008, the U.S. came up with a new approach and created something to replace the igloo. The cool thing about this building is that its shape is aerodynamic.
They’ve propped this thing up on hydraulic pillars to keep it above the snow, so snow doesn’t pile up on top or below it. But every ten years, some snow still collects underneath. Luckily, it can be lifted easily then. And tactically, it’s a free continent, meaning no country owns it. There are 29 countries with their own research stations here. But the question is, what kind of research happens at the South Pole that you can’t do anywhere else?
Scientific Research
Most of it is related to space and astronomy, basically studying the atmosphere and what’s up in the sky. It gets all hazy, and if we set up a telescope in a tropical atmosphere, we won’t be able to see very far. In the South Pole, because there’s no humidity, the sky looks super clear, and telescopes can easily spot things millions of light-years away in space. This photo of a black hole, which was captured for the first time in 2019, owes a lot to the telescopes set up in the South Pole. Besides astronomy, research is also done on ice cores to understand what Earth’s climate was like millions of years ago and what the air was like back then.
The particles and gases that hold all these secrets and power are hidden under the ice. Researchers extract these ice cores to study them and figure out what happened during different periods. Because of the harsh weather conditions at the South Pole, very few researchers are sent here. They mainly take care of the equipment and have to send all the data back to their respective countries. There's only one way to get here, and the same goes for leaving. The South Pole only has a three-month window for research.
"Getting an aircraft out of here for the rest of the year is pretty much impossible, even more so than getting to Antarctica. If humanity exists anywhere else, it's at the International Space Station. But even the astronauts here can land themselves in the ocean if they need to be evacuated from space. However, that option doesn’t apply in emergencies. There are doctors here, but in severe cases, there’s also a panel of doctors in the U.S. available through a video link."
Challenges of Life at the South Pole
The internet is pretty spotty here, and it’s a huge challenge. While the rest of the world can access the internet via satellites in remote locations, commercial satellites don’t even pass over the South Pole. That’s why we can’t receive satellite signals here. There are only a few satellites that can send signals to the South Pole, and they only come through for a few minutes or hours at a time. To use the internet, we have to wait for specific times when the satellite is passing close by; that’s the only time we can get a signal, and that’s just for a part of the day.
The internet only works for 3 hours and 50 minutes, and during that time, scientific data gets transmitted, and researchers can connect with their families. Besides that, waste management is a huge issue in Antarctica. According to international law, it's everyone's responsibility to keep this continent pollution and waste-free because even a little bit of pollution here can impact scientific research. This means that anything that comes here ultimately has to go back. Waste from the station is collected all year round and dealt with at a cost.
"Dead bodies are transferred to a station where this waste is processed and sent back on a ship that only comes once a year during the winter season. At the South Pole station, there are only 45 people, and they are carefully selected for this mission because during this time, if something goes wrong, it's impossible for them to leave or get rescued from the outside world. This crew is trained to handle all kinds of situations for a full six months."
At night, anxiety, depression, and homesickness are really common, and during these tough times, communication is almost non-existent. Managing with such limited resources is a feat and a sacrifice for this crew, and explaining it all in a short video is really challenging for me. Thanks a ton for your loving comments! See you in the next awesome blog!