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Swiss doctor Jacques Richon spent twelve seasons at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica from 2008 to 2021 as the station’s Chief Medical Officer. His decades of experience working as a surgeon, an emergency doctor carrying out helicopter rescues in the Alps, and a renowned mountain guide for extreme environments was a major asset to the teams he accompanied to the station. In his last interview with IPF, he talks about the work he did to improve the medical facilities at the Princes Elisabeth Antarctica, (PEA) and future plans he had for the station.

Guus Luppens, an electromechanical engineer who first travelled to Antarctica during the 2018-2019 research season, was tasked with handling a number of maintenance tasks for Princess Elisabeth Antarctica’s renewable energy production systems. We spoke with him about the work he had done with his colleague Johan Demuylder during the most recent season (2020-2021) at the station.

The last 2020-2021 BELARE crew left Princess Elisabeth Antarctica on Tuesday 16 February after securing everything and putting the station into winter mode.  The station is now running on its own and will do so for the next eight months. It will continue to provide energy for the scientific equipment gathering data for various meteorological and geophysical projects running all year long.

As February progresses and the sun dips below the horizon for longer and longer periods of time each night, it’s a reminder that the 2020 - 2021 season is drawing to a close. Preparations are already underway to prepare the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica for overwintering.

Over the past few years, Science Liaison Officer and Deputy Station Manager Henri Robert has been giving online classes to students in Belgium and around the world from the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica. This season, his lessons have been more popular than ever.

Preben Van Overmeiren, a PhD candidate from Ghent University working for the EnVOC research group, conducted field work collecting organic and inorganic atmospheric particles for the CHASE project, which seeks to learn more about atmospheric circulation in the Southern Hemisphere and how atmospheric particles and gas phase compounds are transported to Antarctica. He also did field work for the CLIMB project, which is investigating how such particles influence cloud formation and precipitation in Antarctica.

As the team has been putting the finishing touches on the station’s new annexes, this past week they also got a lift thanks to a new system they installed last season that can help keep the two annexes level.

Aymar de Lichtervelde, a Belgian process engineer in charge of the water treatment systems at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA) Station, recently took part in an international project bringing together amateur musicians from all seven continents of the world in order to raise money to help support COVID-19 relief efforts.

In a decision handed down on the 5th of January 2021, the Chambre du Conseil of Brussels definitively dismissed all charges of conflict of interest against Alain Hubert and the International Polar Foundation.  

This past week has been quite busy at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica for the team, with a trip to the coast and the last change of a few of the team members for the season.