It's the coldest place on earth, apparently. "Vostok Research Station is around 1,301 kilometres (808 mi) from the Geographic South Pole, at the middle of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet." It's also 1400 km from the coast.
What do they do there? They drill ice cores of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station
Above is the site of the station, openedin 1957, but a vast replacement assembled on land in St. Petersburg has been transported to Vostok to replace the old station which was becoming buried by snow. The initial journey in 2020 was aborted in pantomime fashion. [see bottom link, Trouble at Vostok Station] Can we believe that?
21 April 2023To ensure the construction of the new complex, 19 caravans of sleds and snow groomers successfully travelled along the “Progress”–“Vostok” route from November 2022 to February 2023. More than 3,100 tons of construction cargo and fuel were delivered to the station, 98 wintering polar explorers and seasonal specialists were brought.
The new airfield at the “Progress” station made it possible to quickly deliver cargo and a construction and installation crew to Antarctica. A team of 90 polar mechanics-drivers worked to equip the “Vostok” station with everything necessary. 45 pieces of equipment participated in the transport operations, including 40 “Polar-300” transporters and five “Caterpillar” tractors.
https://www.rgo.ru/en/article/three-mod ... antarctica
15 scientists do science here all year, double that in antarctic summers.
Back in the 50s I guess the Soviets must have driven around hundreds and hundreds of kilometers to see when their thermometers were at their lowest and said, hey, let's build here.
And build they did there, allegedly
https://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/157140/
[source]
aha, the Brits! But drilling into this lake [Vostok] has opened up another can of worms about its contamination by the act of drilling into it. Was it there [simple life forms] or did the drilling contaminate the lakeWhen British scientists in Antarctica performed airborne ice-penetrating radar surveys in the early 1970s, they detected unusual radar readings at the site which suggested the presence of a liquid freshwater lake below the ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
Well, what luck just finding this under the property you developed in 1957!
non-fun fact:
so we're told.in 1982, a short circuit in the electrical wiring caused a fire to break out, destroying one of the station’s diesel generators and killing one of the polar explorers.
Who's paying for the new station?
source - https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/12/22 ... ok-stationOne of the richest people in Russia, billionaire businessman Leonid Mikhelson — the board chairman of the Russian gas company Novatek, — invested about four billion rubles (approximately $53.3 million today) in the Vostok Station’s construction, calling it a “personal project.”