These buildings are what make up Molodyozhnaya, one of the original Soviet research stations in Antarctica, and the site of an unusually large number of plane crashes.

The research station was established way back in 1962 to study meteorology, and was the launch site of over 1000 sounding rockets. But after the Soviet collapse, Russia cut back their expenditure on Antarctica explorations and permanently closed the station.¹

Just to the west of the station, we find our first crashed plane in the snow. This Aeroflot Il-14 was heading back to the USSR when the engine failed shortly after take-off, and the plane crashed, killing 4 of the 7 passengers.

Despite the crash site being very clearly visible, this didn’t happen anytime recently. The image was taken in February 2006, but the crash itself occurred all the way back in 1979!

The cold weather has preserved the crashed plane, and the harsh conditions make any attempt to move it impossible.

Browsing around the area, we can spot another four planes, all seemingly crashed and abandoned. Perhaps this the real reason for closing the station - they kept losing too many planes!

Thanks to GEarthHacks.

It’s that time of year again: December has sneaked up on us, Christmas is on its way and we’re now definitely into winter time.

But as climate chaos threatens our future, it also reduces the possibility of a White Christmas each year. Desperate to see some snow we have to head south to Brabant Island in Antarctica, where we find this fantastic snowball.

The snowball is about 6m wide and appears to be a natural occurrence, having recently rolled off the hills to the north. That would make a great snowman…

Also to get you in the Christmas spirit, Google have announced that in conjunction with NORAD (that’s the North American Aerospace Defence Command) they will be tracking Santa around the globe using Google Earth.

You can bookmark the page now in preparation for Christmas Eve.

Thanks: Micradott and Google LatLong

Although Antarctica’s official population is zero, there is usually between 1,000 to 4,000 people living and working on the mostly uninhabitable continent.

These people are representatives of the 30 countries which operate year-round or summer research stations at various locations, many of which are now viewable in Google Earth. Today we’re going to look at a few of these stations.

Russia’s Mirny station was established during the 1st Soviet Antarctica Expedition and one of the buildings has CCCP (Russian for USSR) painted on its roof.

Australia’s Casey station is a collection of colourful buildings established in 1959. The headquarters at Casey (known as the “Big Red Shed”) are likely the largest building on Antarctica.

Casey station also has a webcam, and you can see a typical day on Antarctica by watching the fantastic time lapse video of yesterday’s shots.

Antarctica has at least 20 private airports for the coming and going of all the staff, and at the UK’s Rothera Research Station we can see the snow-covered 900m runway.

Wikipedia lists 64 currently active stations, so there’s no doubt much more to be found on Antarctica.

Thanks: bruv, Gearthhacks & Rebay

Believe it or not, here’s something else to see in Antarctica! They are snow and ice dunes known as ’sastrugi’, and are formed on a snow surface by wind erosion and deposition. They differ from sand dunes in that the ridges are parallel to the prevailing winds.

These particular sastrugi are unusually large. NASAs Atmospheric Sciences Data Center says:

Usually sastrugi are only several centimeters high and several meters apart, but large portions of East Antarctica are covered by mega-sastrugi ice fields, with dune-like features as high as four meters separated by two to five kilometers. The mega sastrugi fields are a result of unusual snow accumulation and redistribution processes influenced by the prevailing winds and climate conditions. MISR imagery indicates that these mega sastrugi were stationary features between 2002 and 2004.

NASA has lots more information and a great image too, and although the pattern of dunes has changed, I believe you can still identify the exact region I’ve highlighted in our thumbnail. Cool.

Thanks to Twombly for letting us know what this was

Check out this little bit of pixelly weirdness down in Antarctica, not very high-resolution of course (there’s a lot of not-very-much to see down that way I believe), but it means we can finally have an Antarctica category!

Thanks to Winterfresh for sorting us out (And an additional, belated thanks to Dustin, hac and the very first person to submit this, Twombly). Sorry guys, will be more thorough next time!