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There's no improvising the building of a "zero emission" station. Aside from having to determine the various ways of producing energy, you also have to find a way to store the energy and a way to coordinate the sources supplying the base. Ecological research is therefore, in addition to being a model for the future, a lesson in energy management and logistics.

Although the Princess Elisabeth Station is now finished and the last members of the expedition have just returned from Utsteinen, the story isn't over yet. The actual life of the station has just begun, showing an example of how to face the challenges of the future. Next season, the station will accomodate new scientific research teams.

Everyone at Utsteinen has just woken up, yet the village is already full of activity. First on the agenda is the station, where we find the ingredients to fix lunch and dinner. Meanwhile, Koen and Benoît are mounting the solar panels on the station.

This video goes over the different steps of the construction of the Princess Elisabeth Station. The International Polar Foundation would like to thank MDW Productions for making this movie in a very short timeframe.

Led by an expedition team from the Princess Elisabeth Station, the SAMBA crew with Steven Goderis (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Vinciane Debaille (Université Libre de Bruxelles), as well as their counterparts from the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research, reached their base camp on the Antarctic Plateau. Join them on their ski-doos as they cross the blue ice to find meteorites.

The scientists, who were supposed to arrive in Utsteinen on January 27th, ended up arriving later than expected due to the bad weather. The weather conditions in Utsteinen have brought serious trouble to the inhabitants of Utsteinen; the building of the southern scientific platform had to be postponed. The weather, along with the strong winds, surprised the team which is not used to heavy rainfalls in Antarctica.

Zorigto Namsaraev is a microbiologist and works as a researcher-scientist at the Center for Protein Engineering at the University of Liège (Belgium). In the framework of the BELDIVA project, he studies one of the few indigenous life forms in Antarctica known as cyanobacteria.

Sanne Bosteels is a field guide at the Belgian Army. As the only field guide to be sent south for the 2010-2011 season, he will be responsible for the safety of outgoing expeditions. In this video, he shares his impressions on his first expedition last year, and his experience of life in Antarctica.

After having witnessed perpetual sunlight, Antarctica is now showing its true nature. The time has come for a good storm. When the wind blows, snow gets in through the slightest crack, making the base camp vulnerable. It is important to clear the place up, to protect the tents and to shelter the lightest equipment so that the storm doesn't destroy everything.