international
polar
foundation

With all the snow from last winter cleared, the BELARE 2025–26 season is off to a strong start!

The first five crew members arrived and successfully unloaded all their supplies, now the DC3 can go back to get the other 14 team members.

The BELSPO funded FROID research project with support from the International Polar Foundation and its staff spent 5+ weeks by the Nils Larsen blue ice field in Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica. The research project's primary objective this season was to scout various locations in search of the World's oldest ice, drilling many shallow ice cores in the process The air bubbles trapped within these cores can be analyzed and used to reconstruct the Earth's past climate which simultaneously lends insight as to where the climate is heading in the future. Additionally, the team also ran ground penetrating radar to see all the way through the ice to the bedrock as well as carrying out high precision GPS measurements to determine the speed at which the ice is moving.

The BELSPO-funded ULTIMO project with support from the International Polar Foundation and their team spent over a month in close proximity to the Belgica mountain range in East Antarctica searching for meteorites. The logistically challenging expedition was well worth the effort: the team of researchers found 115 meteorites as well as countless micro-meteorites that could potentially help scientists answer questions about the origins of life on Earth as well as shine a light on other big questions about the origins of our solar system.

In January 2025 part of the IPF team climbed the antenna at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica to install instruments for the EPFL-CRYOS project.

During the height of summer at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, temperatures can sometimes climb above freezing, which is warm enough to melt ice in the nearby Utsteinen Nunatak windscoop!

On December 24th, 2024, the first hyrdrogen produced at PEA from renewable energy was used to fill a weather balloon that takes radiosonde measurements as it rises into the atmosphere. It marks a huge milestone in making the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica more self-sufficient and sustainable as it is not longer required to bring large canisters of helium to the station every season to fill the weather balloons that are lunched into the atmosphere.

During the last week of December 2024 at the Lotto Arena in Antwerp, participants in the "Nerdland for kleine nerds" (Nerdland for small nerds) events were treated to videos of IPF #engineer Johan De Muylder talking about life in #Antarctica and doing experiments at the #PrincessElisabeth station such as throwing hot water in the air and freezing soap bubbles. The audience of families at the Lotto Arena were fascinated by the experiments, as you can see from the video here. We're always happy to do our part get young people interested in #STEM subjects!