I remember being vividly marked by the mountains that rose on the port side of the aircraft as we approached Terra Nova bay. Our time at Mario Zucchelli station was one marked with bewilderment and awe, particularly when coming across skuas protecting their eggs with Mt Melbourne (an active volcano) in the background. These two sensations would only continue to grow upon our arrival at Concordia station in the toylike Canadian Basler aircraft, named Lidia.

My first thought upon seeing those towers, small and symmetrical spots in the infinite white Antarctic desert, was: who on earth thought that building a station in the literal middle of nowhere was a good idea? It was, as the French might put it, hallucinant to finally see the place that I would know as home for the next year in person, for real.

The first week consisted of daily medical examinations to make sure we weren’t developing altitude sickness, exploring the base, and taking it easy. Stepping into my lab for the first time, reality started to finally sink in: I was here, this was my new workspace – and dare I say it might be the best-decorated office across the station? With galaxy posters, a giant wooden rocket and satellites hanging from the ceiling, the ESA Concordia MD’s lab makes it impossible to forget where you are.

So, the summer season began. With set mealtimes and base meetings daily, it was easy to fall into a routine.  The beginning was denoted by a handover period between DC21 and DC22, and by the time they left two weeks after our arrival, the goodbyes were already a little hard. Our time spent together was not only convivial and warm to welcome us, but also an opportunity to learn the tips and tricks of surviving a winter-over (and also making the most of it).

At its peak this year, the population of the station climbed to just above 80, with constant movement; flights in and out from Mario Zucchelli, Casey and Dumont d’Urville stations; we also had Australian visitors from North Patch, and our European friends from Little Dome C, which overall fostered a collaborative and international community at the station, particularly during the festive period. Summer at Concordia station was bustling and busy and though it felt crowded at times, the upside was that boredom was difficult to come by.

Human biomedical research at Concordia: the summer period

Like the International Space Station (ISS), Concordia Station is classed as an ICE environment (isolated, confined and extreme), which makes it particularly interesting as a long-term spaceflight analogue, particularly for lunar and martian missions. In fact, the harsh conditions there have earned it the nickname ‘White Mars.’

Out of eight different human biomedical experiments being conducted at Concordia this year, five run almost year-round, across both the summer and winter periods. The distinguishing feature between both seasons is that in the summer, the station is buzzing with activity, the sun casts its light on us 24 hours a day, and there’s always a flight that can come to Med-Evac someone in trouble. In the winter, we are 12 individuals, living in the middle of the Antarctic desert, entirely isolated from the rest of the world and we know no help will come if we run into an emergency. It is for this reason that some of the experiments being run are interested in the differences in human adaptation between – quite literally – day and night.

Psychology and sleep have historically been the two most studied fields in human biomedicine at Concordia, and these experiments continue today. Mindful-ICE II seeks to identify mindfulness techniques and personality traits best suited to withstanding the chronic stressors of ICE environments. CircADAPT is looking at the differences in sleep health between the polar summer and winter, as well as the physiological and epigenetic consequences of disrupted sleep health. ISM is an ESA initiative to understand the way our daily habits and lifestyles change over the course of a winter-over. ChoiceE looks at the effects of a chronic hypoxic environment on immunity. MicroFunExpo is one of multiple experiments this year looking at the relationship between the human microbiome and a confined, isolated environment, also in relation to the immune system.

Setting up and starting to roll out these experiments over the summer period required quite a bit of organisation, and a lot of back and forth with the principal investigators (PIs) – because things in Antarctica are never as simple as they seem on paper – but everything got ironed out and the first round of experiments was completed right before Christmas. The first round involved putting petri dishes around the station (with signs saying Experiment- please DO NOT touch- Merci/Grazie/Thank you), mindfully eating a raisin, and blood tests (followed by lots of centrifuging and pipetting).

As the ESA MD, I also stepped into my other roles on-site: Search & Rescue lead, and analysing the station’s water to make sure it stays safe to drink and that nobody’s peeing in the showers… The rescue training I run serves as a reminder of how dangerous this place really is but also how incredible it is that humans can adapt to live in such an environment. And the environment is about to get even harsher, making the average temperature of -35C in summer and the constant daylight feel like a beach breeze.

Outside of work, our summer period was highlighted by the Christmas festivities (including – would you believe it – a nightclub in the middle of this white desert, adorned most aptly with a hanging cardboard pterodactyl and a makeshift space rocket). I think quite a few people discovered the drastic impact of altitude on alcohol tolerance… New Year was even more busy, and we’d invited some of our LDC (Little Dome C, a camp around 40 km away from Concordia station) and Aussie friends to celebrate at the station with us for a space-themed bash. I went as Spock from Star Trek and thus bonded with an Italian Spock and a German Spock from AWI (Alfred-Wegner Institut, the German polar institute). Our Australian guests came dressed as NASA astronauts, though one of them did us the courtesy of adding on an ESA patch. In addition to celebrating the annual holidays, we also went full-out for fitness and hosted an (adapted) Hyrox competition (nicknamed ICEROX) to keep up with the latest trends back home. The Australians beat us by a mile, but let’s not talk about that. We did beat them at football, though. I think. Either way, it was these moments of collaboration and celebration that cemented some core memories for those of us here in summer.

It’s now been two months since the last plane, and since the station’s population dwindled from 86 to 12 in the span of about a week. It’s meant saying goodbyes, settling into a new routine, preparing for the polar night and getting used to the sun finally starting to set. Temperatures have dropped to -90C already, the winds are picking up, and our altitude is rising. But more on that later…

Concordia station is located on a glacial plateau 1100km inland from the nearest coastal station. Its altitude 3200m above sea level results in chronic hypobaric hypoxia (a lack of oxygen) and a humidity level so low it is classed as an ice desert. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter. The Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter during the polar night, and does not set in the summer, impacting circadian rhythm and mood. The crew must live in complete isolation and autonomy for nine months of their mission – the stakes are high. The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA) and serves as a high-fidelity analogue for Mars missions. The DC21 crew – Dome C Concordia station’s 21^st winterover crew – was composed of 13 scientists and technicians.

The return of the Sun

Robert F. Scott, Saturday 26th August 1911:

“Just before lunch the sunshine could be seen gilding the floe…It was glorious to stand bathed in brilliant sunshine once more. We felt very young, sang and cheered – we were reminded of a bright frosty morning in England – everything sparkled and the air had the same crisp feel.”

Editor’s note: Robert Falcon Scott wrote a journal during the Terra Nova Expedition he led to Antarctica between 1910 and 1913. This specific journal entry was written on 26^th August 1911, from Cape Evans in Antarctica, over 1000km from Concordia station.

The end of the winterover is in sight with the return of the sun in August. At these polar latitudes, dawn isn’t a simple daily event, it’s a transformative moment marked by celebration and renewed hope and achievement. We made it. The eyes of great expeditioners have seen this sight, and now…so have we. Here’s to the end of the long polar night with the first sunrise here since May 4^th 2025!

And with that, the harder work begins. We are exhausted, a lot has happened, we need to finish our science and get the station ready for the next summer and winterover crews. It’s the final push.

Tasks include deep cleaning the station, the technical team clearing snow and reopening the summer camp, and preparing the ice skiway for the first plane. For me, September and October consisted of continuing my winter experiments, sorting and packing samples, uploading data, cleaning the lab, and preparing the handover.

The first plane

In November, after a year on the high Antarctic plateau, the sight and sound of the first aircraft marking the end of our winterover was an incredibly emotional moment. The long-awaited Basler touched down on the ice skiway, bringing more technical crew to help open the station for the summer, the first people we had seen in over 9 months. For me, it was also ‘my ride outta there’, and it felt like the end of an era. It was.

I said goodbye and boarded the small Basler aircraft and began the multi-leg journey back to civilisation – a dramatic descent from 3,233 metres down to sea level on the noisiest twin engine propeller plan I’ve ever been on, trading −50°C temperatures and the endless white horizon for the bustle of the coastal station, the sudden presence of wildlife, and the shock of sea level oxygen pressure and the ability to not wear a cold weather suit outdoors.

After some days’ rest, I got the quite luxurious Airbus back to the gateway to Antarctica: Christchurch, New Zealand. Over a year without rain or warm sun, without darkness in summer or daylight in winter, without fresh food, without shops – the idea of walking through a city or going outside without a huge jacket felt almost alien. Re-entry to “Earth” has been a process.

Final thoughts

But I did it. Over a full year living and working at Concordia station in Antarctica, one of the most isolated and extreme environments on Earth. It still feels surreal. Imagine months without sunlight, temperatures below –80°C, with air so thin and dry you become breathless even talking too fast.

As the European Space Agency’s research doctor, I’ve spent 13 months studying how humans adapt to extreme environments and living through it myself – insights that will help prepare for future space missions. My projects have covered physiology and psychology, from microbiology to mindfulness, all while serving as the station’s search and rescue doctor and monitoring the water recycling system. Each project has required steady consistency and planning despite the challenges of motivation when in the depths of the polar night.

Life at Concordia is a constant balance of science, teamwork, and survival. Our international team of 13 celebrated milestones, fixed problems as they arose, and learned patience and humour in the face of danger and isolation. We each brought our own backgrounds, professions, and personalities, and had to learn to live and work together through the long Antarctic winter. I’m proud of them.

I’ve battled with a huge sense of responsibility and need for skill improvement. Out here, if something goes wrong, we cannot get outside help. The constant readiness has taught me a lot about remaining calm under pressure and teamwork in uncertain conditions, something I will use in surgery back home for sure.

And then there are the moments that took my breath away: the Milky Way bright enough to cast shadows on the snow, auroras dancing overhead captured by the crew’s keen photographers, and the emotional sunrise after months of darkness. We won the Antarctica Film Festival and connected with people around the world through STEM outreach. It was special.

It’s been a rare privilege to contribute to science that reaches beyond this planet, to live and work in conditions that mirror aspects of space exploration, and to experience human cooperation in one of the harshest places imaginable.

White Mars has truly changed the way I see the world. Sometimes I wish I could go back, other times you could not convince me to go back for anything. That’s Concordia.

Good luck to Dr Sarah Gaier, whom I know will do a fantastic job – we went to medical school together and it was such a wonderful moment to snap a photo together on the ice before I left. From Barts to Concordia!

Thanks for following my journey. That’s a wrap!

Concordia station is located on a glacial plateau 1100km inland from the nearest coastal station. Its altitude 3200m above sea level results in chronic hypobaric hypoxia (a lack of oxygen) and a humidity level so low it is classed as an ice desert. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter. The Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter during the polar night, and does not set in the summer, impacting circadian rhythm and mood. The crew must live in complete isolation and autonomy for nine months of their mission – the stakes are high. The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA) and serves as a high-fidelity analogue for Mars missions. The DC21 crew – Dome C Concordia station’s 21^st winterover crew – was composed of 13 scientists and technicians.

Winter is here

The title of this blog is an apt quote from Albert Camus, one that I kept repeating to myself after some of the darkest days of our winterover. Writing this all in retrospect, I cannot understate the extremeness of surviving and working at Concordia station for a winterover. I feel an overwhelming gratitude that we made it in terms of our health and safety, and that we completed our projects to the best of our abilities. To write about the good times makes me miss them, and to write about hard times is something I am still trying to do and processing. Let me showcase the highlights of my winterover…

The beginning of the winterover starts in February each year. We wave goodbye as the last of the summer crew leave on the last plane of the summer season and we are now left alone, isolated from the outside world for 9 months, completely autonomous in daily life and in case of emergency.

The extremes of Concordia

Concordia station earns its nickname of White Mars not just for its stunning, barren ice landscape, but mainly for the extreme conditions a crew faces living and working here. A crew of 13 multicultural and multidisciplinary workers, living in complete isolation in the world’s most extreme environment: extreme cold, low humidity, hypobaric hypoxia at altitude, in complete sunlight or darkness for many months. It is an ideal opportunity to conduct research into the adaptation of the human body and mind in extreme conditions, how we perform in these conditions, and what countermeasures we can implement to facilitate better adaptation and performance. ESA sends a doctor to do that to inform plans for human spaceflight.

We said goodbye to the Sun in May, as well as “warmer” temperatures. I now personally class -30°C as t-shirt weather in comparison to the winter temperatures on Dome C, our glacial plateau. The temperature drops to -80°C with wind chills of -100°C. The polar night sets in with complete darkness from May to August. The last sunset was a huge deal and an emotional goodbye – we remained in twilight for a few weeks before the light was gone completely.

Time to get to work

For me, this is why I came on this mission: to conduct biomedical and psychological studies on myself and the crew, as these are the conditions that mirror those faced by astronauts on long-duration exploration class missions. Every year Concordia station hosts an ESA MD and a human research protocol coordinated by ESA and the French and Italian polar institutes, with projects from research institutions across Europe. The research role of the ESA MD is to plan a schedule (along with rescue training and water analysis duties), motivate the crew to partake, to set up the equipment, collect data via protocol, to process or analyse data, and to facilitate storage and transport of samples back to Europe and upload digital data securely. For DC21, I carried out 8 studies on behalf of research groups.

You can read about many past studies on this blog from previous winterovers, and those published were summarised in a recent paper in Experimental Physiology celebrating 20 years of biomedical research here at Concordia station.
Editor’s note: you can read a summary of these 20 years of research plus some studies performed in the years since this paper came out on our blog here.

Let me tell you about the studies. First up are the International Standard Measures, or as we liked to call them: the iPad questionnaires! These are a standardised set of questionnaires done weekly or monthly that evaluate everything from sleep to diet to mood to crew dynamics. They are also carried out in space and other analogues. It sounds easy enough, but it is tedious to repeat questionnaires, and often the questions made you face what you were feeling – physically and mentally – and so I tried to motivate myself and the crew the best I could.

Then, we have ConTACTS (DLR, Germany), which stands for Contamination Tracking and Antimicrobial Testing Surfaces in Concordia. This study has also been performed on the ISS! This study investigates the decontamination properties of different surface materials. The crew are encouraged to touch arrays of the materials every day to see which microbes survive there at the end of the year. The study also monitors the crew’s skin microbiome over the year with skin swabs. This research is relevant for planning habitats on the Moon and Mars – bacteria, viruses and fungi have the ability to mutate and cause dangerous infections, a threat to astronauts living in these habitats.

Next, a crew favourite – MINDFUL ICE II (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy). This study’s predecessor – Mindful Ice I – was carried out at Concordia with results published here, showing a strong correlation between mindfulness and mental wellbeing, reducing stress and improving crew dynamics. A mindfulness-based training programme specifically designed for human activities in isolated and extreme environments was implemented for us before and during the mission, to test whether mindfulness interventions can improve psychological adaptation in extreme conditions. Mindfulness also has a huge benefit in being a low payload countermeasure. Also, we got to play with Lego!

PAHPA ICE (Universite Paris-Saclay, France) – Physical Activity and Health, Pluridisciplinarity Approach in ICE – is an investigation of exercise tolerance, cognition, and psychological adaptation to the extreme environment, in particular hypoxia. This included a battery of tests including an exercise test, computer-based cognitive testing, saliva samples over the course of a day, a body composition measurement, and the wearing of an actimeter with food diary. It was so interesting to see how muscle, fat and bone mass changed over the winter. I can say for myself, the weight I did lose, I have put back on now…

PreGlu (IU of Applied Sciences, Germany) is a study looking at prebiotics as a countermeasure and its impact, possibly protective, on glucose tolerance, gut microbiota, immune system and metabolism. It included blood tests done every couple of months including an oral glucose tolerance test and, much to the crew’s delight, self-stool sampling (all in the name of science). This was a study that required much motivation as you needed to take a daily supplement.

A study from the UK, SPACE-TIME (University of Liverpool, UK), looked at the passage of time during extended isolation and confinement. This was a set of questionnaires to establish how the subjective speed at which time passes is affected by prolonged isolation & confinement. Insert interstellar joke here.

CHOICE^e (LMU, Germany) looked at the consequences of long-term confinement and hypobaric hypoxia on immunity in the Antarctic Concordia environment. This was an interesting one because it also continues after the mission to see if we develop sensitivities or allergies to things we reintroduce when returning to civilisation.

And one for the spaceflight fans – WINTERBRAIN (DLR, Germany and Harvard, USA), which measured brain activity as well as other parameters during a standardised, learning task on the Soyuz docking simulator. Even Astronaut Thomas Pesquet has completed this study – rankings pending…

A huge thank you to the principal investigators and their teams for their patience with me during the year because working when feeling the altitude and polar night is not easy…but I’m proud to say I managed to complete the experiments each month!

The freshest water on Earth – or is it?

Despite being situated on a freshwater glacier with an abundant supply of H₂O, every drop of water counts. We rely on innovative systems like our Grey Water Treatment Unit (GWTU) to recycle water, and we are mindful to reduce resource consumption from the glacier. The GWTU collects used “grey water” (e.g. from showers, sinks and washing machines), recycling 80% of it via membrane ultrafiltration, UV light and reverse osmosis. This system, developed as part of the ESA’s MELiSSA programme, reduces the need to melt ice – a challenging, energy-intensive and dangerous process for crew in the extreme conditions of hypoxia and cold.

Concordia’s isolation makes it a perfect testing ground for life-support technologies needed for long-term space missions, like a journey to Mars. Carrying enough water into space isn’t feasible, so recycling systems like the GWTU are critical for survival. The International Space Station uses a similar system.

The ESA MD must regularly analyse the water to ensure the system is working safely and the water is drinkable. Checks include ammonia and phosphate levels, pH and conductivity, and growing bacterial cultures. Our plumber Valentin and our electrician Julien oversee the maintenance of the GWTU module in collaboration with a company called Firmus. Every test is vital in preventing contamination. There’s no way to evacuate during the polar winter months, so preventing illness is key.

The GWTU isn’t just about survival here on Earth, it’s shaping the future of space exploration. By perfecting these systems in Earth’s harshest environment, we’re one step closer to going to Mars.

Rescue Rescue Rescue

Now this part of the role was high stakes, and a huge learning curve for us in terms of skill and teamwork. The work done by some members of the crew is incredibly dangerous – they are out for hours in the cold at risk of hypothermia, climbing towers and descending into shelters risking trauma and entrapment. This is why we have a rescue team. During the summer we trained with a mountain guide as a team, and thankfully we had some experienced climbers and alpinists on the team to share wisdom, who I literally trusted with my life. During the winter we carried out monthly drills, even in the extreme weather. From extraction to locating a victim, we exercised our rescue knowledge so that we could remain ready in case of a medical emergency or rescue out on the ice or a remote shelter. It was our duty to have our radios on 24/7 and respond to a fellow crewmember in need. We also prepared for a mass casualty event in case of a plane crash.

Keeping the boredom at bay

During the winter, the days can feel long and monotonous and the work can be difficult with thoughts of missing home – but Concordia has many traditions and new activities to keep us in good spirits. There are musical instruments, a movie room, a library, a climbing wall, and even a sauna! So in the evenings or a day off, you can always find something to do. Crewmembers especially enjoyed photography, to capture the aurora and special moments – for example, we had a full lunar eclipse and moments like the last sunset and the return of the sun.

June 21 marked the midwinter and this is celebrated all around the continent. We received greeting cards – digitally of course – which we printed out and put on the wall. Our chef made us gourmet food, and we set up the living room for celebrations with decorations and even a polaroid station. It’s also tradition to watch The Thing – no comment on the similarities…

In August we had a lot to do. First, we had the Antarctica Olympic Games – where the French stations compete in a variety of sports as well as some non-sporting events like a music quiz and painting competition. Now, given we were living at altitude I think it’s acceptable we did not win – but we gave it a good go! Then we had the Antarctic film festival where there are various categories – we entered the main open film category and then also made a parody of it in another category. And we won! You can watch it here. The crew worked really hard on it and I was so proud to see that work recognised!

Winter was also a chance to connect with the public, students, and professionals around the world. I gave a lot of outreach talks and lectures, thanks to Starlink, and it was great to share my experience and it made winter a lot less lonely. We even had a video link with ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano!

It’s tradition to make a crew plaque to commemorate the winterover and crewmembers. Here is ours, and also you might see some familiar names on past ones who are now in the ESA astronaut reserve corps!

In general, the winter is what you make of it. Many days I would just (and that was hard to do) do my work, eat and sleep. But other days we created incredible, once-in-a-lifetime memories and I will always appreciate those. I was especially delighted on my birthday, with a Taylor Swift themed evening. People really get to know your likes and dislikes when trapped in a tin can in the middle of nowhere.

The skies of Concordia

One of the best things about being in such a remote place is the sky. The blue sunny skies, and pastel or golden sunsets, are immaculate on the glacier. The sky was almost always clear, and if it was white out, we got a wonderful blue band at sunset instead. Then, as the night creeped in, it allowed the Milky Way to shine so bright that your shadow could be seen, and with the sun cycle in 2025, the aurora danced around the station in flashes of green, red and pink.

And that brings us to the end of the winterover…my final blog will be a farewell to Concordia and show you how the hardest part is yet to come with finishing up projects, preparing the station for the new arrivals, and of course saying goodbyes.

I will leave you with some of my favourite skies of Concordia during the winter.

These many experiments are led by research teams spanning over 20 countries and aim to study how humans cope physically, mentally and socially with the stresses of long stays in challenging environments, as well as test countermeasures that can help future explorers. As each winterover crew is small, some experiments are repeated across multiple years, allowing researchers to build robust and unique datasets.

Psychology and isolation

A major strand of Concordia research focuses on psychology and how small groups cope when cut off from the rest of the world – conditions not only directly relevant to Antarctic winterovers but also important for long-duration spaceflight, on a journey to Mars for example. 

A study from 2016 found that social tension tends to rise as the isolated winter progresses, but also that people who maintain a positive outlook and feel equipped to handle the challenges rebound more effectively from stress – a useful finding for astronaut selection.   

Researchers in 2018 observed that some crew members adapt by slipping into ‘psychological hibernation’, an emotional detachment that may help them conserve mental energy during the darkest months.  

Group culture matters – a thesis in 2009 reported that when crews embrace diversity, they collaborate more and seek advice more readily. Countermeasures also help: an experiment from 2015 showed that regular exercise helped protect mood and cognitive performance despite the challenging environment. To better track these dynamics, a team developed ‘ICE-Q’, a questionnaire designed to measure psychological adaptation in isolated and confined environments.

Sleep with no regular day-night cycles 

Sleep and circadian rhythms are also strongly affected at Concordia. With months of darkness in winter and constant daylight in summer, the crew often have trouble with their sleep. The lack of oxygen due to the station’s high-altitude can also lead to periodic breathing or sleep apnoea, as shown by two studies in 2014 and 2015, leading to worse sleep.  

Light-based countermeasures can help: researchers in 2014 found that blue-enriched lighting improved sleep duration and stabilised circadian rhythms as compared with standard white light. However, responses varied widely – another group in 2018 reported that while some crew members adapted well, others faced persistent disruption in their sleep throughout the winter.  

Concordia’s studies show just how sensitive our internal clocks are to light, but also how some individuals are better equipped to handle the challenges.

Healthy hearts at high altitude 

Concordia also provides a unique setting to study how chronic hypoxia – the lack of oxygen at high altitude – affects the cardiovascular system over long periods. A study from 2014 showed that prolonged exposure to low oxygen does not necessarily increase the risk of thrombosis, as might be experienced during long plane rides.  

More recent work in a thesis published in 2023 demonstrated that lower cost tools combining electrocardiography and seismocardiography can detect subtle changes in heart function even in remote, resource-limited environments. These insights are valuable for designing practical, non-invasive health monitoring for those living in remote environments or extra-vehicular activities at future space habitats.

Appetite and nutrition in isolation

Recent papers have highlighted another consequence of long isolation at Concordia: many overwinterers lost weight over the year, despite having access to a balanced supply of food. Two studies in 2025 found that this may stem from winteroverers eating less, possibly due to changes in their taste and smell, reduced appetite, or disrupted eating patterns due to different day-night cycles.

Several participants developed reduced sensitivity to smell and taste (particularly salt), which interfered with the pleasure and motivation to eat. These findings suggest that maintaining good nutrition during long isolation requires not just providing food, but also supporting appetite, sensory stimulation and structured meal habits.

Other research fields have also been studied in Concordia’s unique environment. Studies on operational performance for example show that isolation and hypoxia can accelerate the loss of psychomotor skills, although regular refresher training helps counter this decline, as demonstrated by researchers in 2021, who asked the winterover crew to perform docking simulations of a Soyuz vehicle to the International Space Station.

The research carried out at Concordia is an invaluable picture of how humans adapt to long-term isolation in an extreme environment. Two decades of studies now provide insights that will reach beyond Antarctica, informing future exploration in our Earth’s orbit and towards the Moon, Mars and beyond.  

Scientists around the world continue to analyse this growing archive, and with new studies implemented every year by ESA’s winterover doctor, Concordia remains not just a remote outpost on the Antarctic plateau, but a vital and indeed one of the most unique human research laboratories on our planet. 

Studies referenced 

• ‘White Mars’ – nearly two decades of biomedical research at the Antarctic Concordia station. Angelique Van Ombergen, Andrea Rossiter, Thu Jennifer Ngo-Anh (2021). 

• Social, Occupational, and Cultural Adaptation During a 12-Month Wintering in Antarctica. Michel Nicolas, Sheryl L Bishop, Karine Weiss, Marvin Gaudino (2016). 

• Psychological Hibernation in Antarctica. Gro Mjeldheim Sandal, Fons J. R. van deVijver, Nathan Smith (2018). 

• Beyond the “Right Stuff”: The role of group processes in isolated confined extreme environments. Phillip William Krins (2009). 

• Exercise in Isolation – A Countermeasure for Electrocortical, Mental and Cognitive Impairments. Vera Abeln, Eoin MacDonald-Nethercott, Maria Francesca Piacentini, Romain Meeusen, Jens Kleinert, Heiko K. Strueder, Stefan Schneider (2015). 

• Assessing psychological adaptation during polar winter-overs: The isolated and confined envrionments questionnaire (ICE-Q). Michel Nicolas, Guillaume Martinent, Peter Suedfeld, Marvin Gaudino (2019). 

• Sleep-related periodic breathing does not acclimatize to chronic hypobaric hypoxia: a 1-year study at high altitude in Antarctica. Helio Fernandez Tellez, Olivier Mairesse, Eoin Macdonald-Nethercott, Xavier Neyt, Romain Meeusen, Nathalie Pattyn (2014). 

• Altitude and Seasonality Impact on Sleep in Antarctica. Gregory Collet, Olivier Mairesse, Aisha Cortoos, Helio Fernandez Tellez, Zavier Neyt, Philippe Peigneux, Eoin Macdonald-Nethercott, Yves Marie Ducrot, Nathalie Pattyn (2015). 

• Chronic Artificial Blue-Enriched White Light Is an Effective Countermeasure to Delayed Circadian Phase and Neurobehavioural Decremnts. Raymond P Naijar, Luzian Wolf, Jacques Taillard, Luc J M Schlangen, Alex Salam, Christian Cajohen, Claude Gronfier (2014). 

• Preparing for Mars: human sleep and performance during a 13 month stay in Antarctica. Olivier Mairesse, Eoin Macdonald-Nethercott, Daiel Neu, Helio Fernandez Tellez, Emilie Dessy, Xavier Neyt, Romain Meeusen, Nathalie Pattyn (2018). 

• No effect of isolated long-term supine immobilization or profound prolonged hypoxia on blood coagulation.A Vennemans-Jellema, A J M Schreijer, S Le Cessie, J Emmerich, F R Rosendaal, S C Cannegieter (2014). 

• Changed of cardiac electromechanical function in extreme environments: insights from a winter stay at Concordia Station, Antarctica. Federica Tamiazzo (2023). 

• Effects of one year of extreme isolation in Antarctica on olfactory and gustatory functions. Bea Klos, Sophia Wolf, Kathrin Ohla, Stijn Thoolen, Hannes Hagson, Paul Enck, Isabelle Mack (2025). 

• Behavioural adaptation in diet maintains nutrient composition in an isolated, confined, and extreme environment in Antarctica. Bea Klos, Daniela Reinhardt, Andrea Meyer, Nadja Albertsen, Stijn Thoolen, Hannes Hagson, Carmen Possnig, Paul Enck, Isabelle Mack (2025). 

• Assessment of the effects of isolation, confinement and hypoxi on spaceflight piloting performance for future space missions – The SIMSKILL experiment in Antarctica. Miquel Bosch Bruguera, Andreas Fink, Valerie Schroder, Santiago Lopez Bermudez, Emilie Dessy, Floris P van den Berg, Greig Lawson, Carole Dangoisse, Carmen Possnig, Nadja Albertsen, Nathalie Pattyn, Reinhold Ewald (2021). 

Some of our doctors at work over the year in the ESA lab at Concordia station:

Concordia station

Concordia station is jointly run by the French and Italian Antarctic programmes, IPEV and PNRA. Since 2005, it has operated year-round on the Dome C plateau in East Antarctica, roughly 1100 km inland from the French coastal base Dumont D’Urville. On the icy plateau at 3200 metres above sea level, the crew lives on thick ice, but thin air, coping with chronically low oxygen levels.  

For four months each year, the Sun never rises above the horizon, plunging the station into a continuous polar night where temperatures can plummet to -80°C. During this time, no aircraft can reach the base. The crew is completely on its own, even in emergencies. 

These conditions make Concordia an invaluable testbed for human spaceflight, from the isolation and confinement a crew would feel on a several-month trip to Mars, to the low-pressure and low-oxygen conditions an astronaut would experience during a spacewalk, as well as the need for full autonomy far from home. 

Behind the lab coat

What does it take to spend a year at Concordia? ESA selects one medical doctor annually to live and work far away from their home in this extreme environment, running biomedical research on themselves and on the small winter crew. The selection process is rigorous, and reminiscent of astronaut recruitment. In fact, two members of ESA’s astronaut reserve have wintered over at Concordia station: Carmen Possnig in 2017 and Meganne Christian in 2018. 

Candidates must hold a medical degree, have laboratory experience, be in excellent health and pass medical and psychological tests. They also need to speak English and be a citizen of an ESA Member State. Additional skills help, such as fluency in French or Italian, a background or interest in space, multicultural experience and familiarity with remote environments and adventurous challenges. 

The selection and preparation of a Concordia doctor spans an entire year. Applications open in December, followed by interviews and tests in spring. In May, a panel from ESA, IPEV and PNRA selects the doctor, who then begins training at ESA’s ESTEC site in the Netherlands.  

Preparation continues during the summer across Europe, including a week of outdoor rescue training in the French Alps and meeting with the science teams organising the experiments for Antarctica.  

After summer, the doctor meets the winterover crew at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre, continues preparing for their experiments, and collects pre-baseline data from all crew members to enable comparisons of their health before and after their stay in Concordia. By November, the crew departs for Antarctica, just as the selection process for the next doctor begins. 

At the station

The crew reaches Concordia around November, during the Antarctic summer. At this time, the station is bustling with activity – planes arrive with scientists, fresh supplies and up to 80 people share the base. But by February, the cold winter sets in and the population drops to just the winterover crew of about 12. Each person has a vital role, from ESA’s research medical doctor – who also leads search and rescue – to specialists in station maintenance, glaciology and the cook who keeps morale high and makes sure the crew receive the balanced and healthy diet they need. 

For the medical doctor, the job is twofold: running biomedical experiments and serving as a research subject. This work demands careful planning. Crew participation takes extra time on their schedules, so clear communication is essential. Questionnaires are provided in French, English and Italian and the purpose of the data collection is explained to encourage involvement.  

Experiments are coordinated to avoid overwhelming the crew, and spare parts and redundancy are taken into consideration. Concordia’s setting is also taken into account; the dry environment can lead to static electricity disrupting equipment and constant darkness during the winter can make it difficult to keep accurate morning and evening measurements. 

Throughout the year, science teams stay in close contact with the ESA doctor to troubleshoot and keep research on track. The data collected before, during and after each winterover helps scientists understand how our human body adapts to one of the harshest places on Earth. 

Read here a summary of the results from two decades of research at Concordia station.

Concordia station is located on a glacial plateau 1100km inland from the nearest coastal station. Its altitude 3200m above sea level results in chronic hypobaric hypoxia (a lack of oxygen) and a humidity level so low it is classed as an ice desert. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter. The Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter during the polar night, and does not set in the summer, impacting circadian rhythm and mood. The crew must live in complete isolation and autonomy for nine months of their mission – the stakes are high. The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA) and serves as a high-fidelity analogue for Mars missions. The DC21 crew – Dome C Concordia station’s 21^st winterover crew – is composed of 13 scientists and technicians.

Hello! My name is Nina and I’m currently serving as the ESA Concordia Research MD for the 2024-2025 summer and winterover seasons. I am deep into my ‘Antarctica Era’ as I write this blog entry, but my journey to ‘White Mars’ started half a decade ago and I want to start off by telling you about that journey, as is tradition in the Chronicles from Concordia blog series.

Five years ago, I sat in a small videoconference room with my fellow MSc in Space Physiology & Health students at King’s College London – a course that has produced several ESA MDs over the years – and listened to previous ESA medical doctor Dr Stijn Thoolen describe that year’s biomedical research projects here in Concordia.

Halfway through my MSc, the Covid-19 pandemic hit London, and we were sent home as lockdown in England started. At distance, we learned about conditions faced by astronauts – I saw many parallels in the isolation and confinement we faced during the pandemic with a Mars mission and with life at Concordia station. It was at that moment I knew I wanted the ESA Concordia Research MD job, not just to study these effects but to live through them myself and set out on a path to become a person that had the qualifications and could handle the extreme environment and isolation of White Mars.

I want to contribute to the science that will allow astronauts to perform their roles safely and effectively on a Mars mission and help people on Earth by translating this knowledge back into terrestrial patient populations. I set out to attend courses like the Human Space Physiology Course and Space Physician Training Course at ESA. I also interned with the University of Texas Medical Branch, who train aerospace medicine physicians in America.

My astrophysics integrated Bachelor’s and Master’s, a PhD in medical physics, my medical degree and residency training, plus a second MSc in space physiology and health all came together to allow me to perform well in this role. I also made an effort to do research outside of my NHS clinical work, to attend conferences, to do STEM outreach, to work abroad as a postdoctoral researcher in a multidisciplinary team, to get some search and rescue experience at desert motorsport rallies, and reached out to other past polar doctors to get their perspective. It all paid off, because here I am! I am intensely grateful to all of my colleagues and mentors who helped me on this path.

The ESA MD selection process is not unlike an astronaut selection – perhaps that is why past Concordia winteroverers (such as Carmen Possnig) have done well in the recent astronaut selection process! First you must meet a set of essential criteria such as qualifications and experience (a medical degree, research experience, space interest or background), then desirable criteria (having lived abroad, speaking other languages, the ability to work in a multicultural and multidisciplinary team, search and rescue operational experience).

The role is multifaceted – you are a crewmember, search and rescue doctor, rescue team leader, water analyst, public speaker, and space medicine researcher. You also need to be in great health, both physically and psychologically, to withstand the isolation and extreme environment – with a barrage of medical tests and psychological interviews to ensure this. After that, when down to the final three candidates, an ESA MD is picked and starts to train for the role. On the way to my in-person interview in Paris, my luggage got lost…and so I had to turn up without my suit I’d picked out and without my preparation notes!

Over the summer period prior to the mission, I flew to various locations around Europe including ESA sites to meet the research teams who designed the biomedical experiments and to train in the various techniques needed to carry out these projects at Concordia Station, from aliquoting (separating a sample into smaller equal-sized portions) to mindfulness exercises. Other training involved a mountain rescue course in the French Alps, as well as two weeks with the polar institutes learning how to live safely at Concordia Station and to bond as a team before departure.

Another challenge is what to pack in your canteens for 13 months – and what to take in person as your canteens do not arrive until after Christmas! It turns out, you don’t really need to pack ten perfumes for Antarctica (but the base does smell better for it and it helps with the sensory deprivation). The French polar institute provides extreme cold weather gear, which you pick up in New Zealand on your way to the station. 

And so, I was ready. I paused my surgical residency job in the NHS, packed up and moved out of my apartment, sold my car…and after emotional goodbyes with loved ones, finally the mission started…with the longest travel experience I have ever endured. A flight from England to Paris, then to Singapore, then to New Zealand…a quick rest, then a military plane to the coastal station of Mario Zuchelli (MZS).

We stayed at MZS for a few days to wait for an ideal weather window to fly to Concordia station. Of course, in typical ESA MD fashion, I got laryngitis (the ESA MD always gets unwell at some point it seems). I did not explore the coast much, and recuperated in my room, in isolation. Then we took a four-hour flight to Concordia station, where the previous winter-over crew and logistics crew (who arrived a few days prior) met us. It was an incredibly emotional moment. But of course, we have been hypoxic in a non-pressurised cabin for four hours and just landed in a hypoxic environment, so the first few days we were told to rest to prevent acute mountain sickness, and to take in life in the base before we get to work. 

The summer season is busy – full of learning, adjusting to the way of life and the conditions here, and living in a busy station with a summer crew of up to 80 people. We share rooms, help with food unloading from flights, have weekly talks about the science carried out here, all whilst the sun shines over Concordia 24 hours a day. We have a flag raising ceremony – the British flag was included for me this year, a very proud moment! Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve are celebrated with parties and feasts, and even visitors from the Australian traverse.

And then, after the summer work is done, the last plane leaves in February…and there are just 13 of us left until November, adjusting to even more extreme conditions like the extreme cold and autonomy. We see the last sunset in May, giving way to the polar night. For me, this is when my main experiments begin as these are the conditions I came here to study.

I’ve accustomed to my life on the ice now – my days are typically spent in the laboratory, running my eight ESA biomedical experiments or testing the recycled water that we wash with and drink here, carrying out crew duties like cleaning, attending set meal times, giving online talks for STEM outreach and to conferences, calling home, hanging out with the crew, and being on call for search and rescue 24/7 to care for the crew who do dangerous jobs outside every day.

I reflect back on the process it took to get here. I think about the last 13 months and how much I have been challenged physically, psychologically, socially, intellectually, and on a personal level. This experience is humbling, and it has recalibrated my life outlook for sure.

In my next blog, I will tell you about the ESA DC21 biomedical research projects and water analysis in more detail, and how this research will help astronauts go to Mars, as well as help patients on Earth…and of course, I will show you the beautiful polar night – the Milky Way and Aurora Australis. Also, some insight into how we as a crew kept busy in our spare time over the winter, including competing in the Antarctic Olympic games (in hypoxia!) and our award-winning film festival entry!

Recently, the DC21 crew won a prize in the Antarctica film festival with a video about their life in the Concordia base. Below is a transcript of their video, and some images taken by the crew throughout the months they have spent so far in this outpost more remote than even the International Space Station.

“We came here to study science, but what we found was silence. A silence that breathes and watches and holds us.

Here, even water is not a gift; it is a conquest. Each drop flows because fingers listen to pipes and persuade them to flow again.

Inside these walls, the human body is both subject and mystery. Signals and cells tell us how life endures where it should not exist. The station itself becomes a laboratory of survival.

Between rooms, only echoes remain. The walls remember every step.

Deep inside, a heart beats. Valves and circuits answer careful hands, keeping the pulse steady so the cold never wins.

Light is fragile here. It must be rebuilt, wire after wire, so the darkness never claims the walls.

Here, fear is rehearsed. Fires are imagined and smoke becomes a teacher and we learn to walk through it.

When the call comes, the cold does not matter. We carry each other’s back.

In this cold, every heartbeat is a quiet victory. The body whispers, and careful ears answer.

Even here, green survives. Tiny leaves remind us that life insists, even in the impossible.

Care is not only science. Sometimes it is warmth on a plate, a taste that melts the ice inside.

A cup of coffee; a small ritual that keeps the cold away.

Questions rise to the sky, and the wind always answers first. Data becomes a language written in ice and air.

The snow remembers. Brushes read secrets buried for years. The ice speaks to those who listen.

Out here, silence has a shape. It moves with the wind.

Eyes turn to the stars. They move slowly, endlessly, and someone follows. In their light, questions older than time wait for answers.

Night here is not an end. It is a canvas.

Beneath the surface, silence deepens. Steps echo in frozen veins of the Earth, where no sound dares follow.

The station breathes, even in the darkest hours. Snow becomes water. Metal arms move through the night, feeding the heart of this place.

The horizon changes colour. Day begins, or perhaps it never ended.

High above, waves travel through frozen air. Invisible bridges keep us from being alone.

Day and night trade places. Bodies keep moving, refusing stillness.

Time fractures here. Steps cross between its shards, gathering what storms and seasons leave behind.

We came for science, but what we found was silence. What we kept is invisible. What we left is weightless.

This is life in the base.”

Life in the Base, by Concordia’s DC21 crew
Director of photography: Clément Arrat and Julien Lacrampe
Edited by: Erik Geletti
Voice by: Nina Purvis
Cast (in order of appearance): Valentin Jarnole, Nina Purvis, Pierre Chéné, Julien Lacrampe, Yves-Marie Lahaie, Matteo Beltrame, Laerte Picano, Thomas Pagano, Simona Grimaldi, Davide Carlucci, Julien Castel, Erik Geletti, Clément Arrat.

Some say that leaving Concordia is just as much of a challenge as arriving, if not more. Arriving means stepping into the unknown, preparing yourself mentally and physically for isolation and extreme conditions. But leaving means saying goodbye to the place that became your world, the people who became your family, and the rhythm of life you’ve adapted to over months of solitude and shared hardship. It means re-adjusting to a world that seems to race ahead at nearly the speed of light; a world where maybe some of us have changed while everything else hasn’t; a world where the challenge will be to find our place back.

Mid-November 2024, we left our planet “white Mars”: Concordia station.

A dream became reality, yet waking from it is part of our journey. Boarding the plane, we look back at the station with both a happy and a heavy heart: happy to soon be reunited with family, loved ones and friends who had waited so long, but sad to leave our home — and our crew.

Tears fell as we hear the motor of the Basler DC-3 start, seeing Crew DC21 waving through the airplane window, and seeing our station from above, one last time.

No words needed — complete silence.

Our journey back took us to Dumont d’Urville, the French coastal station in Antarctica. Through the small window of the helicopter, we caught sight of the raw untamed beauty of this continent, and for the first time in a year, we saw not only endless ice, but… water.

Overwhelmed — that’s the first word that comes to mind.

A strange smell reached our noses, colors blinded our eyes — blue, black, grey, red — and sounds: penguin calls, helicopter motors, human talks filled our ears. All over the rocks, we could see small black dots – penguin colonies! What a blast! Caught in a rush of senses, colors, sounds, scent, and touch, we truly felt fully alive.

When people picture Antarctica, they likely imagine a place like Dumont d’Urville: massive blocks of ice, a breathtaking panorama of the Southern Ocean, emperor penguins marching to the coast to fish, Adélie penguins searching for the perfect pebble to build their nests.

And in the middle of it all, a red dot floating on the ocean, our way back home, the icebreaker that will bring us back to reality: the Astrolabe.

Also known affectionately (or not) as the Gastrolabe, the Astrolabe lives up to its nickname — not for exploring stars, but for stirring stomachs.

Once we broke free from the pack ice, very few of us escaped the journey without retreating to our cabins, becoming well-acquainted with the joys of gastrointestinal gymnastics.

Let’s just say: it was less of a picturesque voyage, and more of a digestive endurance test.

Between spotting whales, seals, and penguins, our days were filled with long naps, card games, and philosophical reflections — part of us still in Antarctica, part of us already preparing for what lay ahead. Then, after eight days at sea, we saw it! A tart scent in the nose, green landscape on the horizon… land in sight!

Our journey on the icebreaker ended, and the arrival in Hobart, Tasmania, marked the official end of our mission.

After so many months dreaming of fresh food and nature, we had finally made it.

While our minds were still processing the shift, our senses were already fully immersed.

And what better way to celebrate than with a first beer, and a plate of fresh vegetables and fruit in a local restaurant — surrounded by trees dancing in the wind, the sun warming our skin.

Hobart — a place of wanderers. People arriving, people leaving, each of them with their own story to tell. The end and beginning of so many missions.

The place where our crew mission ended and our personal story began.

The place where we said goodbye, a goodbye that holds a promise of return.

Goodbye to a year full of challenges, joy, laughter, hard work, and tears.

A year that forced us to confront ourselves, face our fears, and push past our limits.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said:

“C’est dans la contrainte que naît la liberté.”

“Freedom is born of constraint.”

That, for me, is the paradox of extreme environments: a place where constraint gives rise to a new kind of freedom.

A final message from white Mars for all wanderers out there: sometimes, we need limits; sometimes, constraint is necessary — to grow as humans, and ultimately, to advance humanity — whether it is in space or here on Earth.

With that, we hope to catch you on another adventure. For now:

“DC 20 Mission complete. Best of luck to DC21 and the new medical officer, Nina Purvis. Signing off. Over and out.”

Nina Purvis is now the ESA-sponsored medical doctor at Concordia station – stay tuned to hear more about her adventures!

Note: the following is a transcript from SpaceInfo‘s recent podcast which you can watch here (part 1, part 2)

Part 1

Where is Jessica?

This is the very first time I talk with someone who is so far from me. A couple of weeks ago we were talking with astronauts in training and they were experiencing a week of complete isolation, but this is quite different – would you like to tell us where you are located?

I’m currently at the Concordia station in the middle of Antarctica. It is a binational research station jointly operated by the French Polar Institute and the Italian Antarctic Research Program. As I said, we are reallylocated in the middle of Antarctica, more than 1,000 kilometres away from the coast on what we call the Antarctic Plateau Dome C. In Antarctica, there are two mountain plateaus and we are on the second one, that is at over 3,000 metres of altitude.

Life in Antarctica

A couple of days ago you were telling me that you were waiting for an airplane bringing food.

We are actually at the end of our one-year mission in Concordia. For one year we come to this Antarctic region to perform research and now we are at the end. We arrived in November 2023 and in two weeks we are supposed to leave the station.

The first plane was actually supposed to arrive today, but in Antarctica it’s kind of impossible to do prognostics – we have a lot of changes due to weather and visibility conditions. The first plane will probably arrive tomorrow or on Wednesday. It’s always a bit of a surprise and we usually know only a few hours before the plane actually arrives that we need to prepare everything.

We have been isolated with 12 other people inside the station for one year and in a few days we will have the first human contact with people from outside the Antarctic world.

That must be kind of exciting, but maybe difficult as well, to meet other people after such a long time?

The first moment was when the last plane left at the end of January. There are two seasons in Concordia – in the summer season there are about 70 people inside the station, a lot of researchers coming from all over the globe to perform research here. At the end of January the last plane leaves and that was the first strange feeling, to be isolated for the next nine months with 12 other people inside the station – this was the first challenge of our mission.

The new challenge is now to actually cope with people coming from outside. We lived at the station all together, we had our own private room, we had our little routines, we were like a little family, and now we need to readapt to the outside world with new people coming, having to talk to people again… we were so isolated. We had these ‘family dinners’ together, but not a lot of communication with the outside world. And now we need to communicate again, we will have new impressions, so quite a challenge to face in the next few days here in Concordia.

Flexible working hours

Do all the people at the station get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, or do you have a 24-hour coverage with different shifts?

We do actually have working hours here at Concordia, which is something between 8:30 to 12:30, then we have lunch, and then again 13:30 to 18:30. But during winter-over each of us has a different job inside the station, so each of us adapts their own daily schedule. We have glaciologists who need to go outside to get samples of the snow, which can be quite a challenge for them because of the extreme environment outside, so they have to adapt their schedule a little bit.

I sometimes have to do blood draws early in the morning, so I start really early in the morning and sometimes also finish late in the evening. We do have some schedules, but we are also all working on our specific tasks during the winter-over, so we have the freedom to adapt our work to the needs that this extreme environment brings with it.

What does Jessica do?

What is your main occupation at the station?

I’m a research medical doctor for the European Space Agency and I’m conducting biomedical research for the preparation of future deep space missions. Before coming to Antarctica, I was trained on several experiments that are proposed by principal investigators from all over the globe to be performed in Concordia.

Then I perform what we call a pre-data collection, which is a baseline of data that we need to have from all the participants. Then during the mission I’m performing all the biomedical experiments on my crewmates and also on myself, which can sometimes be quite a challenge, but I get a lot of help from others.

When we leave after our one-year mission, I will also do a post-data collection. It is basically almost the same as in spaceflight, where you have this pre- and post-data collection, you have a one-year mission with different goals of what you need to study in this environment, and you perform these biomedical experiments during one year. That’s my job in Concordia, and one of 13 jobs inside the station.

The extremes of Concordia

What are some medical challenges that this extreme environment brings with it?

One of the challenges is high altitude. We are at an altitude of more than 3,000 metres and since the atmosphere is really thin here, the low atmospheric pressure means you have low oxygen levels in your blood – we call this hypobaric hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the blood system that can have various impacts on the human body. It can affect your physical performance – so when you go up the stairs, you are really quickly out of breath. When you go outside and you need to walk for several metres, you’re really, really fast out of breath. We can do sports but it’s actually quite difficult at this altitude, because sometimes we even go to 4,000 metres.

It can also affect your cognitive functions and performances, so sometimes we have a lack of concentration or working capacities, so all that high altitude and lack of oxygen can have various effects on the human body that affect you in your daily life.

During the winter‑over period where we are with only 13 people, we have a four-month period of complete darkness, which can have an impact on our circadian rhythms – it can decrease sleep quality, cause us to have less sleep time, we can wake up earlier or have trouble falling asleep.

That can influence not only our physical but also mental health, with mood changes, fatigue during the day… those can all arise when you have problems adapting to this environment during your winter-over stay. This is really important for research, but quite a challenge for the people that actually live in the station.

We are very far away from the coast and one of three bases in Antarctica that operate all year round. The closest one is the Russian Vostok Station, which is 600 kilometres away, so there is no possibility of reaching it. We are completely isolated from the outside world. Especially during the winter months when we have temperatures of about -80°C, there is no possibility of a plane arriving and landing in Concordia, because it’s just too cold.

When you have an emergency on the International Space Station, within three hours you can click the button and within six hours you should be back, depending on the circumstances. In any case, you are able to evacuate someone with a medical issue within 24 hours.

In Concordia during these winter months, we have no possibility of evacuation. In case of a medical issue, we rely on what we have inside the base. That’s a challenge from a medical point of view, but also social. As I said at the beginning, our social interactions are really, really small. so we are living with our ‘family’ here and that’s pretty much it. We can, of course, have phone calls with Europe, we can send text messages, but still – we don’t have real social interactions.

This sense of confinement is a high level of stress for the human body. Just knowing that you are confined, that you cannot go outside, is already a huge stress. I remember when we flew down to Concordia and I saw the station. It appears so small because there is nothing around it – you don’t have any mountains or buildings to compare it with. You arrive and you see these two towers and you think well, that’s where I’m going to be for one year. That’s quite crazy. And you have this feeling of being confined, which goes away a little bit over time. At least here in Concordia you can go for a walk outside the station, which you can’t do on your own on the International Space Station.

So – both a mental and emotional strain for the human body, and a challenge for all potential medical incidents. We have the station’s medical doctor, and we have the ESA medical doctor, that’s it. We are the two doctors of the station. If you imagine having an appendix inflammation or a cardiovascular event during the mission, that would be a huge challenge, because you have only two doctors inside the station that need to manage that.

That brings me to living in an environment with limited resources. You have limited possibilities and also limited equipment. You need to work around these things, and that’s why we train our people to be in a medical team, in a rescue team, in a fire team…  We put a lot of effort in training teams that are capable of providing basic life support in case it’s needed.

What’s the worst that could happen?

What was the worst experience you had during this one year?

Our equipment is very limited compared to what you would find in a hospital, so once you have a surgery, you need to act fast and do everything you need to do to make sure people survive. I would say that the worst that could happen would be a surgery that we are not prepared for. Being prepared for everything is the goal.

Prevention is the most important; that’s something that also happens in space flight: you try to prevent any medical issue possible. That’s something that we do a lot – we try to check all the equipment that people are working with, we try to check the environment, we try to tell the people to not go outside when it’s too windy or too cold.

The challenge that we have here in addition to this isolated remote place is the altitude. Altitude can cause ‘mountain sickness’ – basically what can happen is what we call the pulmonary edema: for example, with this lack of oxygen and too much exercise, you can have water in your lungs. You can also have brain edema: water in your brain. These are life-threatening conditions that can happen really, really fast here in Concordia. They have happened here before.

You need to detect things like this, which can get tricky with 70 people inside the station. You need to monitor a lot, that is part of the prevention. The prevention and the monitoring of people are both super important. That’s actually the basics of medical work here. Pulmonary edema and cerebral edema are things that can happen here in Concordia due to the altitude and the extreme environment and that are, next to surgery, the most critical events that can happen at the station.

From classical pianist to medical doctor

Listeners might be wondering, how did you end up going to Concordia? What did your journey to the station look like?

I would say I have quite a crazy past. I was first studying classical music, taking courses in piano, violin, organs, music theory… then I finally became a music teacher with a master’s degree in music and pedagogy in Switzerland – that was my first career.

I always knew I wanted to do medicine but I had a little bit of a career choice to make because I already had a master’s degree. I started with pharmacology, continued with biomedical studies and ended up finally doing medical school, because I saw only that path to be the right one for me. During medical school I was super interested in human physiology and especially in extreme environments, but I could never really combine those, because there are very few opportunities in extreme medicine.

During my final med school year I was put in contact with an association called Asclepios – a student-led analogue mission from Switzerland associated with EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The goal of this mission is that students learn how to perform an analogue space mission – a simulation of a space mission in extreme environments here on Earth. That was my first contact with space medicine – with space in general – and I would really recommend it, because it opened many doors for me.

The goal of these associations is also to prepare the next generation of space leaders, scientific leaders, to open doors for them and give them an opportunity for a hands-on approach on how to lead a mission, manage a mission, get the financial background of a mission, how to prepare protocols and so on. The association has different teams and all these teams are working for one year to put together one space analogue mission.

That was my first step into space medicine. For three years I worked as a head of the medical team at Asclepios, which is working on medical protocols, emergency protocols, medical equipment… We had to think about what you need in these remote places and what you can actually bring. Then we do healthcare during the mission and also pre- and post-mission. We try to do everything the way we would in a real space mission.

That was my first interaction with space medicine. After that I was super interested in everything related to extreme medicine, extreme environments, space medicine, so I got an internship at the French Space Agency (CNES), within the Spaceship FR project. They are working with MEDES (Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology in Toulouse), where I was actually applying to a position meant for engineers – the title was Crew Health and Performance. I thought, this is quite space medicine-related! I applied and got the job.

I was working on crew health and performance, specifically regarding cognitive monitoring for future astronauts. That was my first research subject within the French Space Agency and it was also where I learned about Concordia as one of the biggest analogue missions in space exploration. I finished medical school and then in January I applied to become the ESA research medical doctor of the next year, for crew DC20.

The selection process was quite busy – first you send a CV and motivation letter, then you have a preliminary interview, then you have diverse medical and psychological tests, because sending people to the most isolated and remote place on Earth requires quite the checkup. You have to undergo cardiovascular and respiratory system testing, diverse psychological tests and a psychological interview. This was all done in Paris. If you pass, you become the new research medical doctor and come down to Antarctica.

Terrestrial ‘astronauts’

With regards to preparation and selection, there are a lot of similarities with space exploration. Are there other similarities?

Concordia is also called White Mars or Planet Concordia, because of the similarities with space and the challenges that astronauts face during their missions. We have these environmental extremes, since Concordia is really located in what you would call a hostile environment. Humans are not made for space, or at least not made to survive in space, physiologically. Humans are also not made to survive in Antarctica. The temperatures that drop to -80°C are quite similar to temperatures you could feel on Mars, that’s something else that we can test here.

What we already talked about a little bit is the lack of oxygen – and this hypobaric hypoxia mirrors the oxygen that is available to astronauts when they wear their space suits or when they are at a future lunar or martian base. Here we have approximately the same level of oxygen that we would expect there. That’s super interesting, because we can do studies here to see how the human body is adapting to these conditions, so that we can make countermeasures for future deep space missions, habitats or space suits.

For now, astronauts go out of the ISS for only a short period of time, but if we have a base on the Moon where people would stay for a longer period of time, that suddenly becomes really important, so we need to know how the human body is adapting. Today, research at Concordia is probably the best way to do so. The data that we have from EVAs (extravehicular activities) is quite small. Here we really have a long period in which we can actually measure these changes.

The remoteness of Concordia really mirrors the isolation and confinement of astronauts inside the ISS. We can test mental resilience, as well as interpersonal relationships. Here in Concordia we have a one-week training all together, but basically except from that we don’t know each other. It’s not like astronauts who train together for many years and really get to know each other. Here we are put in with strangers from different backgrounds and cultures.

We have technicians that are mainly here for the maintenance of the station, we have scientific staff that do research… we really have a bunch of different people that are put together suddenly for one year. That’s quite interesting, understanding our team dynamic, learning more about different cultures in this setting…

Then there’s also sensory deprivation. We don’t have a lot of people here to interact with. Sometimes we use sunscreen just to have something new to smell. A lot of the things we eat here are lyophilized (freeze dried) so they don’t really smell like anything. You really lose your sense of smell, just like you would on a future Moon or Mars base, or on the ISS. That’s also something that you can test here, check whether you can take any countermeasures, and see how people adapt.

Then we have autonomy and self-sufficiency, which is a topic of great focus here in Concordia. During the months when no planes can land here, we need to be super self‑sufficient. We need to rely on all these resources that are limited. One example of that is our grey water treatment system unit.

There are lots of similarities with space to be studied in this extreme environment, with less challenges – at least when it comes to finances – than actually going to space. We can study these things here before we send astronauts on future space missions.

From beehive to ghost town

What were some of the changes happening at the station in the past year?

When you’re living in this small environment, you pay attention to every little detail. When you arrive, there is so much going on at the station, there is a bunch of people coming from everywhere, you have a lot of tasks. Each plane brings new stuff, so you need to help bring it in, you need to work at maintaining the station…

At the beginning I remember noticing the smells of all these people. There was a lot of work being done inside the station, so it was full of life here. About four months ago, when the last plane left, we were suddenly alone. You are walking inside the station and it’s possible that you don’t see anyone, because there are only 13 people.

Before that, you had no time alone. Because you had a room with one other person, it was impossible to have that kind of privacy. During the winter months you have your own room. It’s possible that sometimes you go from one tower to the other without actually seeing anyone. This had really changed over time.

It’s a little bit like being in New York and then suddenly finding yourself in a small village somewhere isolated. During summer we have very little time together and then suddenly during the winter months we are all together all the time. You see a lot of changes in the dynamics of teams and you get to know each of the crew members so well. Especially I do, because I’m doing all the experiments on them so I really need get to know them. They start to become almost like family members, like brothers and sisters. And you know what it’s like with siblings – you love them, but sometimes they annoy you.

What is really interesting in that you are working, but you are also living together. That’s a completely new field of expertise for me. Normally you go to work and then you have your social interactions, your family and so on. Here, you are working with these people, then you see them at lunch, you see them for the movie night… that’s crazy and super interesting, but sometimes challenging as well.

I would say the station really changed over time. It became bigger actually, because when I landed it was super small and very crowded with so many people inside. But in winter I have everything I need.

When I was leaving Europe to come here I was a super excited because I wanted to do so much during this year. You are allowed to take three aluminium boxes and I couldn’t choose all the stuff I wanted to put in them. Looking back, after one year of being isolated here, I didn’t really read any books, I didn’t really do all the stuff I wanted to do. You have your work, your station, your social time with the crew members and that’s basically it.

You don’t really need a lot to survive in Antarctica and that is probably something you could also apply to space exploration. A human doesn’t really need a lot to survive. Then there is obviously the question of how long you can survive for.

After a brief interruption mid-talk caused by loss of signal:

We are super lucky because now we have Starlink. I think last year this would not be possible with the connection we had. When I arrived in Concordia I was only able to send WhatsApp texts, no pictures, no videos. Now I’m able to communicate with you like this – that’s absolutely fantastic.

Part 2

Towards individualised medicine

How do you see the future of human health in space?

We have now entered a phase of space exploration that is really exciting. After Apollo missions, there was very little advancement in the exploration domain for a long, long time. Today, with the Artemis project, with the willingness of humans to go back to the Moon and eventually further to Mars, a new era of space exploration has started. This also includes all the commercial spaceflights. Human presence beyond Earth orbit is expected to expand.

With this, space medicine becomes super important. We have 20 years of research on the ISS, but there is still so much we don’t know about how the human body adapts to longer stays in space. We have data from six month-periods, sometimes a little bit more or less, but there is no data about how the human body would react when going to Mars: that would be a one-way trip of nine months, without even talking about staying there and coming back again.

Coming back to commercial spaceflight, this brings a completely new and broader range of people that will go to microgravity. First it was only astronauts that are trained for many years, now it will suddenly be people that can go to space without this long training phase, without all this prevention, without this very selective process ensuring that a human being is healthy enough to go to space.

These people don’t have the extensive training, they have varying levels of health and fitness, so now space medicine needs to shift towards providing highly adaptable and user-friendly medical protocols. We need to focus even more on prevention to make sure that these people will be able to go to space and come back healthy, which is the most important.

All this really opens doors for individualised space medicine. We have seen from studies, also in Concordia, that people adapt very individually. You can’t say that 90% of people will adapt in a certain way, so you really need to focus on individualised medicine. That’s also what is happening in medical research in general – more focus on the human being individually. We would need to assess individual risks for conditions like cardiovascular issues, osteoporosis, we would perform genetic testing and so on. This is a completely new health domain that space opens up.

Another point is that all the new flights will enable us to do more research in the domain. So far, we only have data from the few astronauts that are in space. Commercial spaceflights enable us to make more advances, not only for space exploration, but also for Earth-based medicine.

Remote medicine

Research in extreme remote locations is important not only for space exploration, but also for medicine here on Earth, in remote places. For example, we perform different experiments here using ultrasound, we have a portable MRI – that is very unique, because an MRI has never been brought to Concordia before. The technology has been adapted to the remote, extreme environment – the MRI that you know from the hospital could never have been brought here, but this one is portable. It’s not only important for research, but also for diagnosis on site. Imagine one of the crew members having neurological symptoms during the winter-over when no evacuation is possible. Being able to do brain imaging here in Concordia to detect or exclude a stroke – that’s a huge advancement in human health care in remote, extreme places.

For instance, in Africa there are still places so remote that people there do not have access to healthcare. Bringing a portable ultrasound there can potentially save the life of a woman giving birth, for example. It can be lifechanging for people in remote areas.

Doing research in this environment, whether for space exploration or not, you need to adapt all the necessary equipment. You cannot bring a whole hospital to the Moon – it’s impossible. What you need to do is find out how to bring the most-needed equipment, how to adapt and advance augmented reality, how to use protocols that are automated. Also, how to do surgery via telemedicine – that’s something that we rely on here in Concordia. If we had a surgery problem, we rely on telemedicine to communicate with a doctor in Europe to tell us what to do.

Doing research in an extreme remote area is from my point of view really important to advance healthcare in general. It doesn’t matter whether we go to the Moon or not. On Earth, there are so many places that do not have access to healthcare where this technology could be really helpful.

Have you been in contact remotely with a doctor while in Concordia?

Since we are only two doctors at the station, we don’t have all the knowledge of all the specialties. We have a camera that shows exactly what you are doing and that is relayed to people on the continent. This way we are able to communicate and get advice directly from an expert in the field. I think that is also the future of space exploration – you will never be able to send medical staff of all the specialties to Mars. You need to find ways to go around this.

This brings me back to being self-sufficient here at the station. Places like Concordia also help to develop what we call Environmental Control and Life Support Systems – systems that take care of water recycling, temperature regulation, oxygen supply… the essentials that people need to survive, whether it’s on the Moon, Mars or on the International Space Station.

Here in Concordia we have the greywater treatment unit, which is a system for water recycling. Today we are able to recycle up to 80% of the water we use, which is huge for a station like this. The prototype has been supported by ESA, one part has been used for the International Space Station. The MELiSSA project is continuously working on life support systems for the Moon and beyond. You need to work with what you have, and you find new methods that can be potentially used for other purposes on Earth.

I’m living in this remote place, but I’m also really enjoying the fact that we have limited resources, because it allows us to advance research in different fields – not only biomedical, but also ecological climatology and so on. We have a really good platform to do research in all these fields.

Empowering future generations

How do you see your role as a woman at the station?

This topic is quite an important one to me. I come from a small village in Switzerland and basically had a choice of becoming a farmer, a schoolteacher and all the basic role models that we had in the 90s. I am here today because I was impressed by women that do different things in life. For my musical career, my goal was to become like Martha Argerich, a very famous pianist. I had this idea in mind because I saw her on TV – I saw this image of a powerful woman that was playing the piano and I thought, yes, that’s who I want to become, that’s what I want to do. That’s the person I looked up to.

This comes back to where I am today. Women in STEM is a big topic now. I’m happy it’s a big topic, because we need to show that women are equally capable of innovating, leading, solving all these complex challenges – in roles that have been for a long, long period of time only dedicated to men. I think that the visibility of women in STEM is really important. I’m not a quota fan, I think you need to do your work and you need to be eligible for it, but I’m all for the visibility.

It has made me who I am today and I think it’s important for all the little girls out there to see that it’s possible – whether they choose a career in STEM or not. They need to see that they can become a medical doctor, they can go to Antarctica, they can become an astronaut… The only thing that really matters and through which we can help this is true visibility. That’s why women in STEM are super important to me, to empower future generations.

We have also seen in many studies that diverse teams really outperform homogeneous ones – especially when you have high stress levels, for example space exploration missions, but also Antarctic missions, and in all other extreme fields. I think as long as we improve the visibility of women and enable women to become specialists in their field, we can have more diverse teams, and these teams will have a greater capacity for problem-solving and resilience.

We need to showcase the success of women in space and STEM and show that women actually belong in these fields. You speak about engineering – as a little girl, I didn’t even know what engineering was. I finally became a medical doctor, because my mother gave me one of those little doctor kits for children, with little stethoscopes and all that stuff. Had I not received that, I may have never thought about a career in medicine. For me it’s not about fairness or just quota, it’s really about maximizing the potential of a team, the potential of people that work on a specific topic – not only with women, but with people of all fields that bring their own background, which makes work interesting.

I can be in Antarctica today because of the legacy of all those really hard-working women who came before me. It’s not so long ago that women were actually not able to come to Antarctica. Today we cannot understand it, but for a long period of time it had been like that. So I’m really thankful and I think the least we can do today is talk about it and show to the world that it’s possible. For all people to have the opportunity to choose what they would like to become, for them to have an idea of everything that exists to make their own choices when they grow up.

“Whatever you want to do – it’s possible.”

Do you have any advice for people that are enthusiastic about following the same path as you?

You have seen that my career was, and still is, changing a lot over time. Today I’m laughing about it, but I had a lot of moments where I was unsure about what I would become, which path I should choose. I know so many people that always knew what they wanted to become and they focused their life on doing so. For me this was not the case. I had a lot of interest in different fields and today I can say that I managed to put all these fields together – I can do space medicine, I can do extreme medicine, I’m in Antarctica, which has always been a dream of mine. I can also do music, I can play at concerts, so I really have a lot of chances to do what I want to do.

What I want to say with that is that there are points in your life when you’re unsure. I had many times like that – a year of pharmacology, a year of biomedical studies, and I remember saying to my family at the end of biomedical studies that I’m too old to start medicine now. I was older than pretty much all my study peers at that time, but today, looking back, it doesn’t really matter because you do what you want. Maybe you will find another path, but when you’re in it, sometimes you see barriers that you think you cannot go through. But just remember it’s not true.

Whatever you want to do – it’s possible. Sometimes it needs a lot of effort, sometimes you need to pass a lot of barriers. I had to fight a lot of stigmas because I was much older than anyone in my medical studies. Today I’m 34, I finished my medical studies, I’m in Antarctica, I’m a research doctor. That’s really nice, but because I want to go to the US, I need to redo all my medical studies. But I now see life as a continuum of stuff that you want to do and accomplish. And if you really want to do it, you will accomplish it one way or another.

Don’t let yourself be stopped by things that in the end are not important, just follow your path and if you want to do something, just do it, you will be able to. At least it worked for me! I don’t say it’s always easy, but I think life is too short to do things that you don’t really want to do, so do what you want to do and what you’re living for. You will only be good at things that really interest you, so that’s what I would go for. That, I think, would be my message.

Today, I want to take you on an analogue mission, one that mirrors the challenges and conditions faced by astronauts in outer space: Concordia. This station in Antarctica serves as a crucial analogue base and provides a unique platform for conducting research in the field of space medicine.

But what exactly is an “analogue station” and what does it entail to partake in an “analogue mission”?

Join me, along with French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, as we embark on a journey to “white Mars” and discover how Concordia station serves as a parallel for studying human adaptation in space.

BLOG 2 – Concordia 23.05.24

Not all experiments and investigations can be conducted directly in space due to constraints such as time, financial resources and equipment availability. Therefore, researchers often resort to conducting what are known as analogue missions, where they simulate the conditions and scenarios encountered during space exploration, here on Earth. These studies are conducted in environments that closely mimic certain aspects of space travel, providing researchers with invaluable insights into the challenges and complexities of long-duration space missions. From testing cutting-edge technologies to refining operational protocols, analogue missions also serve as essential tools for preparing astronauts for the rigours of space travel without the need for actual spaceflight.

This year we had the chance to welcome Thomas Pesquet to white Mars!

Extreme, most extreme, more extreme

The Antarctic continent is known for its harsh and unforgiving climate, characterised by bone-chilling temperatures, fierce winds and months of perpetual darkness during the winter months. At Concordia station, the “winterovers”, a crew of around 13, are isolated and confined during one year under these environmental conditions that closely resemble the hostile landscapes of outer space. This makes Concordia station an ideal parallel for testing equipment, technology and survival strategies in extreme environments. But living at Concordia station is not only about conducting scientific experiments or maintaining the station’s infrastructure; every aspect of life here demands meticulous planning and adaptation to the challenging conditions. Much like astronauts preparing for long-duration space missions, the winterover crew at Concordia undergo the extreme Antarctic conditions and engage in a wide range of scientific experiments aimed at advancing our understanding of human physiology, psychology and technology.

From Earth’s edge to Mars

It’s not for nothing we call Concordia “white Mars”. Travelling to the end of the world is not so different from travelling to Mars; in fact, our isolated research station shares many similarities with the red planet. Situated in one of Earth’s most extreme environments, Concordia experiences temperatures going down to -80 °C, akin to the icy chill of Mars which ranges from -60 °C to -125 °C. During the harsh Antarctic winter, our crew faces relentless winds and extended periods of darkness, mirroring the barren, icy landscape of Mars and giving us an idea of what life could be like for astronauts on the red planet. On top of this, Concordia’s altitude of nearly 3200 m, coupled with fluctuating air pressure, induces oxygen deprivation akin to even higher altitudes of 3900 m. This constant low-oxygen exposure mirrors the challenges astronauts face during extravehicular activities (EVA).

Human adaptation, an extreme challenge

As a research medical doctor with ESA, my role involves conducting experiments on both crew members and myself throughout our year-long stay at Concordia. These experiments cover a broad spectrum of physiological and psychological assessments, with a primary focus on understanding the long-term impacts of the extreme Antarctic environment on the human body. Among my duties is the collection of blood samples for analysis, examining parameters such as haemoglobin, haematocrit, blood gases, stress markers, oxidative-inflammatory responses, glucose metabolism and others. These analyses deepen our understanding of how the human body adapts to prolonged isolation and confinement at high altitude. The initial days of acclimatisation to this new environment are critical, so blood draws are conducted shortly after our arrival at the station. Given this, it’s not surprising that one of my first activities with Thomas was taking blood samples.

Mars, sure, but under what conditions?

Anticipating human exploration back to the Moon and beyond, future astronauts will be exposed to long EVAs and their challenges. During spacewalks, astronauts are exposed to the low atmospheric pressure of space, similar to the conditions we experience here on the Dome C plateau. Due to the high altitude, the oxygen availability is reduced our and crew at Concordia, called DC20, experiences the same condition that astronauts do, known as hypobaric hypoxia.

This condition can impact cognitive functions, decrease physical performance and pose serious risks during space walks. Due to the hypobaric hypoxic environment, being at Concordia is somewhat like continuously being on a spacewalk, so it helps us to better understand the adaptation process required. To monitor the changes in our bodies, we use ultrasound, a medical imaging method that uses high-frequency sound waves to create an image of a specific region of the body. Specifically, we are trying to measure blood flow in the intracranial blood vessels of the brain as well as extracranial ones to determine how the human body acclimatises to this harsh environment.

Puffy face, the need to pee and water in the brain

Similar to the space environment, individuals here in Concordia experience a phenomenon known as fluid shift. This occurs due to changes in atmospheric pressure and our body’s response to it. Since Concordia is located at high altitude, the atmospheric pressure decrees, causing a decrease in the pressure of gases within the body – this means there is less pressure pushing the fluids in the body, particularly in the lower extremities. This condition results in a redistribution of fluids and leads to symptoms we also see in astronauts, such as facial puffiness, increased urination and altered blood pressure. One consequence of this fluid shift can be cerebral oedema. To examinate this condition and its long-term effect on the brain, we perform a magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, or MRI, using the very first portable MRI machine in Antarctica.

My eyes, my eyes

Another tool to measure an increase in cerebral pressure and redistribution of fluids in the eyes is an optical coherence tomography (OCT) – maybe you have seen Alexander Gerst using this technology on the International Space Station to monitor the health of his eyes during his mission. Astronauts in space often experience changes in visual acuity, or eyesight, due to an increase in intracranial pressure. Since we are exposed to similar conditions, we monitor these changes by looking at the optic disc of the eye. The OCT is a non-invasive diagnostic tool that creates a map of the retina; this is done using an imaging method called interferometry, which uses reflected light to create a picture of the back of the eye. Even Pingu wanted to give it a go.

The before and after of analogues

For an analogue mission, measurements are usually first taken under “standard” conditions that act as a baseline compared to the more “extreme” conditions. This baseline data collection (BDC) is performed at DLR, the German National Aeronautics and Space Research Center next to ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne. Two measurements are taken: one before the mission in Antarctica and one after. This allows us to gather information about the human body under standard circumstances and to be able to compare the values.

The Antarctic analogue

Concordia showcases humanity’s ability to adapt and endure in the most challenging conditions. Our mission is to live, work and survive here. It is a mission that serves as a vital hub for advancing our knowledge of human spaceflight, offering insights into the physiological and psychological challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration missions. With our work, we hope to push the boundaries of human space exploration beyond low Earth orbit. We’re keeping our (cold) Antarctic fingers crossed that we will soon see our astronauts not only on board the International Space Station, but also the Moon!

BLOG 1 – Concordia 25.01.24

First of all, a happy new year from Concordia Station! As the research MD of crew DC20, I’m excited to share my first blog post detailing the incredible journey that brought me to this remote corner of the world. It’s hard to believe that two months ago I set foot for the first time on this endless white ice surface, where Sascha (research MD for DC19) welcomed me. Today we are already living here as if we had never done anything else, but let’s begin at the very beginning.

Antarctica is not your typical travel destination and reaching Concordia station is an Odyssey in itself. My journey began with a train from Geneva in Switzerland to Paris, eventually leading me to the heart of this frozen continent.

In true Antarctic fashion, my arrival was marked by twists. Laden with excess luggage, navigating Paris during a metro strike and searching the endless streets for a lost Uber driver, I finally made my way through Singapore to Christchurch in New Zealand, also known as the gateway to the endless ice. Upon my arrival I quickly realized that in Antarctica, planning takes a back seat to nature’s whims and adaptability is key. So instead of staying some days in Christchurch I began a race against time and faced the challenge of downloading essential data from my Cloud account on the way to the airport before boarding the Lockheed C-130 Hercules plane for a seven-hour flight to Mario Zucchelli Station, our intermediate stop.

While boarding Hercules via the rear ramp at the plane’s back, comfort fades as we settle into seats made of seatbelt nets, surrounded by the deep hum of the massive engines; losing oneself in music or reading is swiftly abandoned, entering a trance state between sleep and wakefulness. Armed with a sandwich and apple juice for lunch, I refrain from drinking too much due to the lack of a toilet on board, but I appreciate this feeling of a rather spartan journey where everyone focuses on their mission, facing a mirror of the resilience required for Antarctic exploration. As the engines hum, faces gravitate towards small windows, seeking a glimpse. And there they are, vast expanses of ice in the Antarctic Ocean—a frozen picture etched in memory.

Mario Zuchelli Station is an Italian research station located at Terra Nova Bay in the Antarctic coast, a gathering spot for many Antarctic travelers. Some had been stranded here for days due to unfavorable flying weather. Each day we anticipated the DC20 crew’s flight to Concordia, often concluding with a card game in the main living room. Finally, on 10 November, the eagerly anticipated words echoed: “DC20 boarding to Concordia Station!”

After a few hours in the non-pressurised Basler DC-3, our pilot Chuck confirmed our arrival at Concordia station. The station, concealed by the Antarctic plateau Dome C, welcomed us with its white towers. A collaborative effort between the French and Italian polar research programmes, Concordia is a hub for scientific exploration, offering an Earth-based analogue for space science research. It provides an environment simulating challenging conditions such as isolation and extreme environment faced during space travels, facilitating the study of human adaptation and countermeasures. Important data is gathered here to prepare future human space exploration in long-duration space missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Exposed to temperatures of -37°C for the first time, we were unsure what to wear, so we simply put on everything we had available. But the warm welcome from the outgoing DC19 crew, who had survived the last 12 months here, allayed our fears and the cold was no longer a priority. The moment the door of the Basler DC-3 opened, we stepped onto the ice rink that will be our companion for the next 12 months. The following days prohibited extended physical activity due to Concordia’s low pressure, creating environmental conditions akin to an altitude of 3800 m above sea level. It is important for the human body to adapt to the low oxygen level to prevent high altitude sickness. We would soon understand how the extreme environment can swiftly turn life-threatening.

One of the highlights during this time was the raising of the Swiss flag at the Concordia station. Every year, the flag of the research MD is raised together with the French and Italian flags, a very emotional moment bringing up a deep connection with my home country and a feeling of pride. The sight of the flag in the middle of the icy expanse evoked a sense of identity and belonging and made the experience very special.

The upcoming month promises a flurry of activity. Scientists from around the globe will be at the station and conducting research while technicians maintain the station. By the end of January, a crew of 13 people including myself will endure the Antarctic winter, facing complete darkness, extreme temperatures and isolation. This endeavour will hopefully contribute valuable data offering insights into Earth’s environment, space exploration, and the adaptability of humans and technology to these extreme conditions.

I’ve been told that a voyage to this place isn’t for the faint-hearted, but for those who dare, it assures an unmatched experience. My first impression: the profound remoteness and beauty of the endless white expanse of ice undoubtedly make the challenges of the journey worthwhile.

To be continued…

You could be the next person after Jessica to experience the endless white of Antarctica – apply now and embark on this incredible journey!

BLOG 5 – Concordia 28.11.23 

Now the winter-over 2023 is done and DC19 entrusted the station to the summer team and the next crew. We saw the first plane of the season arrive on 9 November and have started a busy handover period since then. The new ESA-sponsored medical doctor Jessica Studer took over the lab shortly after and is already busy with great research projects, keeping in line with the traditions of the last years – you will certainly read more about them in her blogs!  

The tasks of the leaving crew are different depending on the role, but include some training for the new crew, cleaning as well as preparing research material and samples for shipment to the research teams. And of course, at some point, saying goodbye to Concordia, which after more than one year feels very much like home. DC19 left in good spirits on 20 November. The journey home led us through Mario Zucchelli Station, which we reached with a DC3-Basler aircraft, and from there the Italian Airforce flew us to Christchurch with a C130; after that, the rest of the trip would sound a bit less exciting. 

What happened in the last months at Concordia? We saw the sun come back in August, and it will now stay above the horizon throughout the Antarctic summer until next year. Many of the crew shared the feeling that three months of darkness were actually not too hard on us. That said, seeing the sun after all this time still held some emotions.  

After this, the winter ended just like it started, with a beautiful twilight period and a shift from the long-lasting darkness to constant daylight. We completed the final stage of data collection for all eight biomedical research projects, did a lot of cleaning inside and outside the station and some of us started making plans for a life beyond Concordia (hiking in New Zealand, applying for new jobs and booking holidays). 

Although Concordia is a very special place and truly isolated and remote, it becomes a normal home during the winter and the life here feels quite normal. Maybe it can be described as somewhat simpler, with less daily choices about what to do, where to go and so on around here. Fortunately, that allows us to focus on the tasks ahead and it is safe to say that the whole crew made a remarkable contribution to the scientific community with all the projects conducted over the winter 2023.  

For me, conducting the research in the name of ESA was certainly the privilege of a lifetime and I am grateful for the trust and support I received. It is needless to say that all the study results at Concordia can only be achieved by an immense effort of many people, who plan projects and keep Concordia running.  

With these words I am signing off from this blog. Thank you to everyone who followed DC19. 

Sascha 

This is Sascha’s last blog entry as his year in Concordia came to a close; watch this space for news about ESA’s new medical doctor, Jess, who just started her winter-over in Concordia! 

Are you looking for an Antarctic adventure? Apply now to become the research medical doctor who implements the biomedical programme at the Concordia station of Antarctica!

Some people were wondering how the 12 ‘winterers’ at Concordia are doing these days. The answer is, that overall we are doing well. Compared to the Antarctic summer, many things are different during the winter months, the weather gets significantly colder, darker and a reduced atmospheric pressure is noted. Needless to say that this makes spending time outside much more challenging. So far, we have reached a minimum temperature of -77.7°C and an atmospheric pressure of 622.3hPa (equivalent altitude at 45° Latitude of 3926m). The wind-chill during these days in the middle of May dropped the temperature to -96°C. Temporary numb fingertips and occasional frost-nip in the face are sometimes seen.

Before the polar night begun, we observed a beautiful twilight period with almost normal day and night cycles. Then, the sun set for the last time on 5 May, ever since, we have only seen some light far beyond the horizon and otherwise spend our days in darkness. For many of us, Concordia has become a place of routine. Every week, we conduct two to three projects of the biomedical research and repeat the same cycle the next month. However, sometimes there are additional data collections of projects that chose a three-month interval for example. For the winter-over season of 2023, eight biomedical projects were chosen and the pool of data and bio samples (these are kept frozen outside) is growing.

The technical team at Concordia remains busy maintaining the station, it should be mentioned that they are doing an incredible job and all our lives depend on them. The list of facilities maintained by the technical team is long and includes electrical generators, plumbing with drinking water supply, vehicles to collect snow for our water, the electrical network of Concordia and all peripheral shelters, and this list could go on endlessly.

Our two glaciologists go out almost every day to take environmental samples and keep monitoring devices running. The astronomer often disappears in the night to look after the two telescopes, which for example study extrasolar planets.

The fact that this blog entry could be uploaded is owed to our Informatics and Communication Technology specialist (in short ICT) who never stands still to keep the station systems connected to the outside world. He also makes sure no one gets lost during outside endeavors by tracking them via satellite positioning (so it works) and keeping frequent radio contact.

The doctor of the station keeps the hospital and crew healthy. The medical facility at Concordia includes everything you would find in a small rural hospital, such as a dental treatment unit, an operating theatre, X-Ray, microbiological diagnostics, and a well-equipped pharmacy.

Special remarks should be given to our station leader, who does an outstanding job in looking after all crew members, ensuring safety and handling official communications (and much more). Besides that, he is responsible for many research projects in the field of physics.

Last but not least, our cook probably makes the biggest contribution to the wellbeing of the crew. Personally, I assume I will never eat better again (not considering the lack of fresh food) highlighting the skills of our chef. This is a small insight into the many responsibilities and tasks handled by the DC-19 crew.

The latest highlight of our winter-over was the celebration of mid-winter in late June. Traditionally, the week which marks the half time of the winter season is undergone with good food and some additional leisure activities. Previous crews have decorated the living room and dressed differently to break the aforementioned routine. Beside other activities, we gave playing volleyball at -70°C a try, for future reference, the ball becomes rather hard at these temperatures.

Although Concordia quickly feels like a safe place and the presence of the extreme environment can sometimes escape our consciousness, the crew needs to be prepared for special circumstances like medical emergencies and fire. Hence we do fire drills and practice medical scenarios (outdoor rescue and treatment inside) on a regular basis. Next, we are planning an evacuation exercise. In case of an uncontained fire at Concordia, the crew would have to move to the summer camp, which serves as a back-up place to survive the rest of the winter.

The sun is expected to rise again on 10 August, I will keep you posted on that and report about the second half of our winter in the next blog.

Best wishes from Concordia,

Sascha

During the three months of summer, the days are very structured. Breakfast is from 7:00 to 8:00 that ends with a morning briefing by the station leader; lunch is at 12:00 and dinner at 19:30. For the biomedical research, the days start early as a lot of data is collected before breakfast. Quickly after the first weeks at Concordia passed, a routine of conducting experiments settled in. However, this routine is sometimes broken by fire drills and rescue exercises. All DC-19 crew members play a role in an event of fire and we practice such a scenario around once a week.

I am unsure if previous ESA medical doctors (leave a comment if any of you read this) had the same role, but Hannes Hagson my predecessor and I both fulfilled the first responder role. This requires to go quickly to the place where a fire is suspected, rescue potential victims, attack the fire if possible and radio our status to the station leader. In addition to being the local fire brigade, the DC-19 crew is also responsible for outside (and inside) rescue during summer and winter, and of course this is practiced as well. Most challenging is getting a victim down from the American Tower (a 40m vertical structure), or up from the 15-m deep “seismo” cave. There are many reasons for someone to need help, from medical emergencies (such as hypothermia or heart problems) to injuries and evacuation into the station by the rescue team is often the first course of action.

This year was the first exercise of a mass casualty event – in our case we simulated a plane crash. Most incoming and departing flights are logged at Concordia station during the summer campaign. There are challenging conditions for the pilots and previous aircraft incidents in Antarctica warrant the need to be prepared. So, one Saturday morning, we practiced. More than 30 people were involved and the procedure of DC-18 Doctor Fabien Farge turned out to be a success.

Leisure time at Concordia is individual, the gym is a popular place, there are many books to read and movies to watch, table football and an Italian game named Boccette are also among the frequent activities. The DC-19 electrician Vincent brought a kite and due to good weather and some wind, we ended up outside flying a red kite in the Antarctic breeze on boxing day.

After three months here, it was time to wave goodbye to the last plane we will see until November. On 7 February we started the winter-over period qone day ahead of schedule. Needless to say, the departure of the last plane is a special moment and we experience a wide range of emotions, both for the people leaving and the winter-over crew.

And then, after some hours of sorting the last fresh food that had arrived, there was silence. Concordia becomes a calm and quiet place during the winter. After three months of daylight, we saw the first sunset. The sun only dips below the horizon and there is no complete darkness (yet), but the twilight draws some beautiful colours into the Antarctic landscape of Dome C. In some weeks, the Antarctic winter will begin and the whole crew is waiting to see the night sky for the first time. I will keep you posted about the winter period at Concordia.

BLOG 2 – Concordia 08.11.2022

Hello everyone. This is my first blog entry written at Concordia. The team, partly consisting of the majority of the winter-over crew and also people for the summer campaign, arrived together two days ago (from writing this text, not its posting online). Therefore, these are my very first impressions from Concordia. It is now half past five in the morning; the station is very calm and there is constant daylight outside at around –50°C. But before I go more into detail, some words about how to get to Concordia.

Due to thin ice at the Italian Station Mario Zucchelli, our way led us from Christchurch to the American McMurdo Station. We flew around four hours in a commercial Airbus A319 airliner and landed in a white dessert. Before landing, we could see the east coast of Antarctica, a truly beautiful sight with infinite snow and ice. To mitigate the Covid risk, we walked directly from one aircraft to the next one. This one was an 80-year-old DC3 Basler and if not before, the journey now started to feel like an adventure.

After a short flight of 90 minutes, we arrived at Mario Zucchelli station, where we spent two days before the well-anticipated day of going to Concordia came. During the stay at Mario Zucchelli, we were able to see the building of a new runway on land, which in the future will make logistics to Antarctica easier and independent from the ice thickness. It was easy to recognise the incredible effort it takes to build this infrastructure in such a remote place.

The flight from to Concordia was about four hours long when we finally arrived. Just after landing from afar, the station looked smaller than I had imagined and as we taxied almost directly to the front door, the long journey throughout this year was over and the next chapter about to begin. Upon arrival we walked directly to the station, on these maybe 100m, I met Hannes Hagson the DC-18 ESA research medical doctor in person for the first time (see mandatory arrival selfie). We had exchanged messages during preparation and it was a very warm welcome.

At the station, basic vital signs were taken and we were allocated to our rooms with the warning to keep physical activity to a minimum. After all, we effortlessly went from sea level to around 3200 m altitude, which at the polar regions converts to an atmospheric pressure around of 4000 m altitude in Europe (629,3 hPa at arrival to be precise). Symptoms of mountain sickness were very present for the first 24 hours but eased off gradually. During the first 48 hours, instructions and tours in the station followed. The station is a truly remarkable place, not only because of the beauty of its remoteness, but also the technical operation is very impressive. Experts may excuse my basic explanation, but for some it might be interesting to know a bit about how the station functions. The energy supply comes from three generators run by Jet A1 fuel, only one is needed to power the station. In addition, some solar panels are close to the station, especially useful during the summer period, as daylight never ceases. Water is partly recycled by a complex device developed in collaboration with ESA, which also served as a model for the water recycling system on the International Space Station. However, drinking water comes from fresh melted snow. The station itself is a comfortable place with living room areas, great food and interesting people. Because of the cold weather gear, we received before departure, a walk around the station at -45°C felt not very cold at all. Yet, the remoteness and the sight of an endless flat white surface with the small two towers of Concordia in the middle, made me feel a bit like being on another planet, or is this just my enthusiasm for spaceflight playing a trick on me?

The next days will be filled with the hand-over from Hannes and settling into station life, also including the formation and training of the rescue team, which is part of the ESA medical doctor responsibility. From this entry, 92 days are estimated until the start of winter-over and departure of the last plane.

Hello everyone from the new person behind this blog for one year. In the past, I was greatly fascinated by reading this Concordia blog and it is a true privilege to be writing it myself now. As the other ESA research MDs before, I would like to give a personal insight into the journey that comes with a season at Concordia, my motivation, the research, the preparation and the experience at the station. To put my point of view into perspective, it seems appropriate to introduce myself shortly. After school, I spent some years in prehospital care as a paramedic, before pursuing medical school in Austria and becoming a doctor. After an academic detour into neuroscience in London, UK, I finally found myself training to become a neurosurgeon. I have always been fascinated by space flight, had an interest in research and the desire to make meaningful contributions to the scientific community. Therefore, the ESA biomedical research program at Concordia seemed like one of the greatest personal and professional goals I could think of and led me to my application.

On the way to Concordia, during a relatively short period in Christchurch New Zealand, I started writing this first blog entry. Relatively short in comparison to the previous, Covid-shaken seasons, still long enough to facilitate anticipation and excitement of what lied ahead. The transfer to Antarctica and finally the arrival at Concordia has its own logistic challenges. This year being complicated by the thin ice sheet at Mario Zucchelli station unable to support large incoming aircrafts at the start of the season, a flight to the American McMurdo station was planned, further complicated by the still omnipresent Covid pandemic, which does not spare Antarctic stations. The calm days in Christchurch seemed to be the perfect timepoint to start sharing my experience. While my mission was still to begin, an interesting journey this year had led me to this point.

Early 2022, a day I vividly remember, I received an email from ESA, inviting me to an online interview for the Concordia position. Ever since this moment, my whole year was mainly spinning around going to Concordia. After another interview in Paris, alongside thorough medical and psychological testing, I received an email that I had been selected. Needless to say, that this was, and still is, a dream come true. Although I have had put much thought into going to Concordia, the challenges and perks, the significance of the task ahead slowly sank in even more, increasing motivation and excitement, but also making me very humble. Over the summer months, I have had the pleasure to meet many researchers behind the projects I would conduct. At this point I want to thank all of them again for their hospitality and the time we had (in case anyone of them reads this blog). As autumn came closer, it was time to venture on the final preparation before the big departure. As it is the research MDs responsibility to lead the rescue team at Concordia, I received training in the French alps and suddenly found myself rappelling down a cliff. No challenge for mountaineers, but still a leap of faith for myself. All factors, the companionship, location and professionalism made this an amazing experience and after one week, it was time to meet the winter-over crew for 2023. During another week, we got to know each other, were taught about specifics of Concordia and spent a Biwak in the French countryside. The final stage led the winter-over crew to Cologne, in the :envihab within the German Aerospace Centre (located just next to the European Astronaut Centre; EAC). Here the team spent one week collecting baseline data for all projects I would conduct during the next year. This meant filling out a lot of questionnaires, measurement of body composition, cognitive performance tasks, and all kinds of body fluids taken. We wrapped up this final week of preparation and ended with a short visit to the EAC, which felt like the perfect reminder, what most of the studies are about- human space exploration.

This leads me to the motivation to go to Concordia. And I certainly speak for many readers when I say that I am deeply fascinated by space flight. I cannot even say when exactly this fascination started but I can remember watching Space Shuttle launches and the movie Apollo 13 with my brother. The idea of contributing to space exploration is my greatest motivation as I believe that human space exploration is one of the most important explorative frontiers of our future. For myself, it is safe to say that I feel very privileged to make a small contribution to help people live in space, on the moon and beyond.

Space exploration is about humanity and despite looking into the night sky and dream about space, it is important to me to also mention the people behind these projects. Going to Concordia is a great team effort and many researchers worked hard over years to make these projects a reality, therefore I am incredible grateful to do the data collection at Concordia. The time before leaving for Antarctica is special and I want to thank my family and my partner for putting up with my fixation on this extraordinary mission. The next blog will be written at Concordia, and I will try to share how I experienced the first days.

Concordia Station, Antarctica 24^th September 2022

Hello one and all!

First, let me apologise for the delay in getting this blog written. I promised to return to you at some point once our winter isolation had started, and, whilst I suppose I technically have not broken that promise, the spirit of it seems somewhat damaged, given winter has been going for almost 8 months and we celebrated midwinter three months ago here on Dome C. It has been a very busy winter in terms of workload, but also I have struggled to put into words many of the experiences of Concordia. Nonetheless, let me take you back to February 7^th, when the sun was shining 24/7 and the station was still buzzing and busy.

It was the day of the last flight out from Dome C before the start of winter. Anticipation had been building over some days as more and more people were leaving with several flights departing, until finally it was just the Winterover crew and a few others left. As the final flight landed I remember starting to really feel the sense of impending isolation. This was the absolute last moment to change one’s mind. In an hour the plane would be gone and with it any chance of getting out of Concordia for 9 months of cold and darkness. Despite feeling absolutely committed to the mission and relatively at peace with the nature of existence here, strange thoughts of unexpected illness and accidents flashed through my mind. Which is why I was surprised, when the flight took off with the last of the summer crew after hugs goodbye, that my main feeling was relief. Relief that the ‘real’ mission had finally begun.

Since then there have been several key milestones. The sun set for the final time at the beginning of May to signal the start of the long, harsh, polar night. We celebrated midwinter late June, with a series of nice dinners and some of the good wine, including a Swedish midsummer feast which was appreciated by all (but most of all by me I would venture)! We have taken part both in the Antarctic winter games and the Antarctic film festival, and we have grown together as a crew during this long isolation.

It is difficult to verbalise exactly how strange it is to live here in complete isolation for such a long time. Whilst large numbers of people (including myself) have experienced isolation of one form or another during the Covid-19 pandemic, the otherworldly remoteness and physical inability to escape Concordia is something else entirely. Though not actually on another planet, one might as well be (the fact that the station architecture looks like it is from some 80s space sci-fi helps!)

Work here is hard and plentiful and one is by default mission-focussed, but sometimes, sitting in my ESA lab, staring out over an endless sea of ice toward a dark pink/blue horizon, knowing the outside temperature is -79 degrees Celsius and that we are as far away from civilised society as one can be, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the bizarre circumstance I find myself in.

It is also interesting how time has both the quality of passing very quickly and extremely slowly at the same time here at Concordia. Some months have disappeared, without trace, in a flash, whilst some single days stand out like supernovae in distant galaxies. Currently, on the homestretch, I am reminded of the last few kilometers when running a marathon. Every single step forward seems extremely long, yet it also brings the finish distinctly nearer, like a telephoto zoom.

The polar night, when the sun does not rise at all, which here at Dome C lasted from 3^rd May to 10^th August, exemplifies this feeling of time constriction and dilation. Over three months of darkness and extreme, otherworldly cold has the ability of seeming endless, but also like a single, albeit long, night. The day of sun return, in contrast, seems filled with odd minutiae. Waiting expectantly for the first actual glimpse of a ray of sun, photons flooding over the horizon, an event so mundane in our normal lives but here taking on the meaning of actual rebirth.

Now, with under six weeks to go until the first flight arrives, thoughts of the base have turned to preparing the station for the arrival of the summer crew. We are in the middle of our big ‘spring clean’ of the whole station complex, and individually we are preparing for the handover to our successors of the DC19 crew, whilst normal scientific and technical work of course continues. October looks set to be incredibly busy, but with the reward of fresh food looming in November no one is too bothered by this…

Summer is coming!

The last airplane out of Concordia research station in Antarctica took off today with the remaining summer researchers, marking the start of winter-over for the core group of 13.

ESA-sponsored medical doctor Hannes Hagson and his crew mates will spend the next nine months in isolation. Four of these will be in the total darkness of Antarctic winter; the sun disappears from May and is not seen again until late August.

As well as offering complete isolation, Concordia’s location at 3233 m altitude means the crew experience chronic hypobaric hypoxia – lack of oxygen in the brain.

Each year, ESA sponsors a medical doctor to facilitate research experiments on how the isolating, confined and extreme environment affects long-term human physiology and psychology.

Concordia is a collaboration between the French Polar Institute and the Italian Antarctic programme and is one of only three bases that is inhabited all year long. This year’s DC-18 crew are a mix of Italian and French researchers and technicians plus Swedish MD Hannes, who will manage the base and conduct science in the uniquely pristine landscape of Antarctica.

The last airplane also brought the final load of fresh food that were transferred into the base via a moving lift.

How does Hannes feel about the start of winter? “Been looking forward to it!” he says. “My own room, finally!”

Follow Hannes’ adventures here on the blog.