Concordia Station, located on Dome C, is run jointly by France and Italy. During the summer there are about 40 to 50 people on station. In 2005 the first winterover crew, 13 people, settled in to the new station for a long, cold, dark winter.     The summer camp is made up of a main building that consists of insulated shipping containers put together to make a long, narrow building with about 10 bedrooms, each housing 2 people, a TV room, the galley, kitchen, and clean-up area, a couple bathrooms, and a cool-storage room for non-frozen food. Aside from that main building there is the free-time tent, a well-insulated and heated tent that has another TV room (the station doesn't receive any channels, but there are plenty of tapes and DVDs), some computers and offices, and a large room where people play games (billiards and ping-pong), and spend some of their free time.     Most of the other buildings in the summer camp are also well-insulated tents. Four of these tents provide the sleeping areas for most of the people on station in summer.     By the end of January 2005 workers had (mostly) completed the new, year-round station buildings. These elevated structures are designed to keep residents comfortable during the winter when temperatures can drop below -80°C (-112°F). They are supported on pillars that have hydraulics capable of raising and leveling the buildings. This is necessary because building anything on the Antarctic Plateau causes drifting around it, which will eventually bury the buildings with snow.

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Page created 21 May 2005, Last updated 21 May 2005 22:30 Pacific Daylight Time.