In the 1970s, Dome C was the site of ice core drilling by field teams of several nations. It was called Dome Charlie by the U.S. Naval Support Force, Antarctica, and its Squadron VXE-6, which provided logistical support to the field teams. In January and November 1975, three LC-130 Hercules aircraft suffered severe damage during attempted takeoffs from Dome Charlie. In November 1975 and November 1976, the U.S. Navy established field camps on Dome Charlie to recover the aircraft. Following major structural repairs and replacement of engines in the field, the three LC-130s were flown to McMurdo Station on December 26, 1975, January 14, 1976, and December 25, 1976. From November 1977 to March 1978 a French party of 13 settled down in the existing camp left by the aircraft rescuers. They brought several tons of equipment—thanks to the VXE-6 airplanes—and achieved the planned ice-coring campaign down to 980 m bringing to surface, and later on in their labs for study, ice samples 45,000 to 50,000 years old. During the Antarctic summer of 1979, the camp was re-occupied by Americans and French, under the auspices of the US Antarctic Research Program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Deep ice core drilling, meteorology and seismic studies were conducted. The camp, with a maximum summer population of 18, was operated and maintained by four employees of ITT Antarctic Services and one US Navy medical corpsman. When the camp was shut down for the season in about January, 1980, it was left mostly intact, with a radio-isotope powered remote weather station operational. In 1992, France decided to build a new station on the Antarctic Plateau. The program was later joined by Italy. In 1996, a French-Italian team established a summer camp at Dome C. The two main objectives of the camp were the provision of logistical support for the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica and the construction of a permanent research station. The new all-year facility, Concordia Station, became operational in 2005. The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names considers "Dome Charlie" to be superior to the informal name, "Dome C," and that it has precedence over "Dome Circe", a name suggested from Greek mythology after Circe, the bewitching queen of Aeaea island, one of the children of solar godHelios and the Oceanid nymph Perse, who changed men into animals by magic, by members of the SPRI airborne radio echo sounding team in 1982. Later, it was named "Dome Concordia" after that same French/Italian scientific base.
Environment
Dome C is one of the coldest places on Earth. Temperatures hardly rise above in summer and can fall below in winter. The annual average air temperature is. Humidity is low and it is also very dry, with very little or no precipitation throughout the year. Dome C does not experience the katabatic winds typical of the coastal regions of Antarctica because of its elevated location and its relative distance from the edges of the Antarctic Plateau. Typical wind speed in winter is 2.8 m/s. Dome C is situated on top of the Antarctic Polar Plateau, the world's largest frozen desert ever. No animals or plants live at a distance of more than a few hundred meters from the Southern Ocean. However, south polar skuas have been spotted overflying the station, away from their nearest food sources. It is believed that these seabirds have learned to cross the frozen white continent instead of circumnavigating it.
Astronomical observatory
Dome C is notable for its potential to be an extremely good astronomical observation site; the transparency of the Antarctic atmosphere allows stars to be observed, even when the Sun is at its highest possible elevation angle of 38°. The good viewing is due to very low infrared sky emission, extremely low humidity, a high percentage of cloud-free time, low atmospheric aerosol and dust content, and freedom fromlight pollution and background light other than auroras and moonlight. This location was a serious candidate for the ESO's E-ELT project. However, sky coverage is less than at lower latitude locations as northern celestial hemisphere objects never rise or are too low above the horizon. Writing in the Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2005, Karim Agabi et al. discuss the suitability of the site for astronomy in terms of the seeing. They determined the median seeing to be 1.3±0.8 arcseconds. This is significantly worse than most major observatory sites, but similar to other observatories in Antarctica. However, they found that 87% of turbulence was below 36 meters. A telescope built on a tower could rise above this "boundary layer" and achieve excellent seeing. The boundary layer is at the South Pole and may be as low as at Dome A. In an earlier paper, Lawrence et al. considered the site and concluded that "Dome C is the best ground-based site to develop a new astronomical observatory". This team measured superior seeing of 0.27 arcseconds, half as large as at Mauna Kea Observatory. This figure was taken with an instrument insensitive to near-ground turbulence and so it is comparable to the 0.35 arcseconds Agabi et al. measured for "free atmospheric seeing". The 2004 experiments to measure the astronomical conditions at the site were unattended, controlled by a computer system that had to supervise the generation of its own electricity using a jet-fuel powered Stirling engine. The computer, running Linux, communicated with the outside world using an Iridium phone.
Since Concordia Station is a prime space mission analogue, the European Space Agency conducts biomedical research there in collaboration with the French and Italian Antarctic programs. Living conditions upon Dome C simulate what Astronauts have to go through in long-duration spaceflights. To name a few of the common challenges that the Concordia crew and Astronauts have to face, they both live in isolation and confinement, in different atmospheric pressure conditions, with an abnormal day/night cycle plus several effects on their everyday life, such as sleep difficulties. Obviously the above parameters influence not only physiology but also psychology. The European Space Agency hires a Medical Doctor each year to winterover at Concordia Station and facilitate biomedical experiments on the crew. These experiments are selected over a variety of tests proposed to ESA by European universities and participation from the rest of the crew is voluntary. It is important to mention that this research aims not only at improving living conditions for Astronauts in a future human journey to Mars, but the results are also applied directly on society - they help doctors devise therapies for patients suffering from similar difficulties in Europe and elsewhere.
