Akademik Vernadskiy, a Ukrainian scientific station in Antarctica, will get Hr 27 million ($1.1 million) for another round of in-depth modernization in 2020, according to Yuriy Poliukhovych, the first deputy minister for education and science.
“We managed to allocate funds to modernize our Antarctic outpost again this year,” the official said in Kyiv on Jan. 28 during a presentation of a newly-issued commemorative post stamp issued in honor of the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica in 1820. “Such an aid was rendered for the first time in 2018. In 2020, Hr 27 million would be allocated to make sure that our scientists feel comfortable and can conduct research safely.”
According to Ukraine’s National Antarctic Scientific Center, the government in 2019 in addition to the annual Hr 60 million ($2.2 million) budget, raised another Hr 34.6 million ($1.2 million) for the polar outpost. This was the first major overhaul of the Vernadskiy Station in more than 20 years since Ukraine purchased it from the United Kingdom at a token price of just 1 pound sterling in 1996.
Summer sun sets on the Ukrainian research station Vernadskiy in Antarctica on Dec. 2, 2009. (Ukraine's National Antarctic Scientific Center)
In a February 2019 interview, the Antarctic Center director Yevhen Dykiy, a decorated combat veteran of Russia’s war in Donbas, told the Kyiv Post that due to years of bitter lack of funding, the station declined so badly that virtually each of its components, including fuel, heat, and water supply systems, as well as housing blocks for personnel, required immediate overhaul.
Some of the works were completed in 2018-2019. And according to Poliukhovych, a new stage of modernization will envisage updating the station’s life support systems, particularly energy, heating, water supplies, as well as a waste management system. Also, the station would get new modern scientific equipment, he added.
As recently as on Jan. 20, the Antarctic Center also announced its 25th annual expedition to Antarctica. The team of 12 scientists and technical workers, said to be the youngest polar expedition in Ukraine’s history, will set sail in March to spend nearly 12 months at the station doing research in polar biology, geophysics, and meteorology.
The Vernadskiy research base, previously known as the Faraday station under the British flag, is located in the Bellingshausen Sea at the Antarctic Peninsula 2,756 kilometers away from the South Pole.
Today, the station consists of 12 buildings, including a residential block, a geomagnetic observatory, a very-low-frequencies oscillations receiver, and a biological laboratory. The station’s scientific instruments together monitor Antarctica from its very depths to outer space above it.
It is normally run by 10-12 persons all year long and also a number of scientists coming to the station in the summertime. In its better times, the station used to welcome expeditions of nearly 50 scientists but starting from 2002, it suffered severe budget shortages which often allowed for hosting only skeleton crews of several crewmembers.
The situation started gradually changing only by 2019, when thanks to increased financing the Antarctic Center managed to send as many as 26 explorers to the Icy Continent — the largest expedition since 2001.
Thanks to this, Ukraine remains in a club of 30 nations present in Antarctica all year long.
A pod of penguins stands next to Ukrainian national flag at the Vernadskiy research station in Antarctica on Dec. 1, 2002. (Ukraine's National Antarctic Scientific Center)
The Antarctic region in which the station is located is considered as having a relatively forgiving climate, with temperatures rarely sinking below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit). As of Jan 29, 2020 afternoon, the station enjoys mild summertime cloudy weather of 1.7 degrees Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit).
Nonetheless, the outpost sees over 300 days of dense snowing each year, and once registered the frost as severe as -47 degrees Celsius (-52,6 Fahrenheit).
Other than that, the station is a popular tourist destination during 3-month warm periods of ice-free navigation in the region, with nearly 4,000 tourists visiting the Ukrainian outpost. The station is known for its museum of British polar missions of the 1940s and 1950s, a small Orthodox Christian chapel – the world’s most southern one – and a small souvenir shop, where visitors love having their mail envelopes marked with Vernadskiy’s special postal stamp, which features the base’s coordinates.
Besides, the base also has the Faraday Bar, a classic English pub with only three tables, where Ukrainian crew-members treat their visitors to a shot of “Vernadovka” – a sort of samogon distilled at the station.
The Ukrainian Antarctic Center presents welcoming tourism at the station as a promotion of Ukraine in the world rather than a commercial business.
