Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

The International Polar Year 2007-2009 draws to a close, but the show must go on. Today, German science minister Annette Schavan inaugurated Germany’s new permanent Antarctic Station Neumayer III – via the safety of a video link.

The new base, built on a stilt-carried platform above the Ekstrom Icefield in northwestern Antarctica, and connected to a garage under the snow, is operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research. Nine over-wintering staff will run the station during the dark Antarctic winter. In summer, it will host up to 50 scientists and technicians, allowing for continuous field work and measurements in meteorology, geophysics and atmospheric chemistry.

Germany’s old Neumayer Station, just a few kilometres from the new base, has sunk twelve meters deep into the ice since it was built in 1992 and will have to be abandoned soon. Der Spiegel has a detailed account of how, by contrast, the new station’s retractable stilts should keep it ‘dancing’ on the shifting ice beneath. Construction of the station, which cost around €40 million, was overshadowed by a helicopter crash last spring that claimed the lives of two people and injured three.

Image: credit to the Alfred Wegener Institute