The Science and Technology Calendar | 35 years ago, China first advanced into the "Seventh Continent", and the Antarctic scientific expedition began

On November 20, 1984, 35 years ago today, China's first expedition team to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica set sail on the "Xiangyanghong 10" and "J121" ships, and set sail at the dock of the East China Sea Branch of the State Oceanic Administration, and more than 100 scientists took two 10,000-ton ocean-going ships to carry out scientific expeditions. This is the first time that China's expedition team to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica has set sail for the "expedition", and since then Antarctica has had a beating "Chinese heart".

The expedition personnel rushed to Antarctica, and their task at that time was to establish China's first scientific research station in Antarctica and conduct a multidisciplinary comprehensive investigation at the same time. Using the boats of its own construction, carrying the instruments and equipment of its own manufacture, to the Antarctic to build China's first research station - this is undoubtedly a pioneering move in the history of China's scientific investigation.

As we all know, Antarctica has good conditions for studying high-altitude physics, astronomy and other disciplines, but the environment is harsh. The Chinese Antarctic Scientific Expedition Station provides a scientific experimental base for Chinese scientists and scientific research groups/organizations to carry out a number of disciplines in Antarctica and a number of major scientific research.

At present, the Chinese Antarctic Research Station has been completed, including the Chinese Antarctic Great Wall Station (completed on February 20, 1985), Zhongshan Station (February 26, 1989), Kunlun Station (January 27, 2009) and Taishan Station (February 8, 2014), as well as the fifth research station under construction on Enksborg Island, the new Station of the Ross Sea in Antarctica, China.

In addition to the establishment of scientific research stations, more and more "Made in China" have also played a big role in China's polar scientific expeditions. For example, full-wing aircraft, all-terrain vehicles, buoyancy rovers, unmanned automatic observation and other Antarctic scientific research "heavy weapons".

Latest developments

On November 9, China's 36th Antarctic Scientific Expedition sailed aboard the Xuelong through the Roaring West Wind Belt and headed for the South Pole. At the same time, the icebreaker "Xuelong 2" made its first voyage to Antarctica, and the "Double Dragon Exploration Pole" attracted many attention.

This expedition will make full use of ships, sea ice, ocean, land, air, research stations and other platforms, through land-ocean-atmosphere-ice shelf-biological multidisciplinary joint observation, to carry out a series of work and projects to further grasp the trend of Antarctic changes on the global impact, improve China's ability to adapt to and cope with climate change, and actively participate in Antarctic global governance.

In addition to scientific researchers, the ship also carries China's first polar unattended energy system developed by Southeast University - "Dongda Extreme Energy". This "giant charging treasure" will be installed at Taishan Station, where the average annual temperature is minus 36.6 °C. Through satellite remote monitoring, scientific expedition personnel can "sit in Nanjing and watch antarctica" in the future.

On the morning of November 19, Xue long and Xue Long 2 entered the dense ice area of the Antarctic continent with a thickness of more than one meter. According to the expedition team's plan, the "Double Dragon" arrived in the Antarctic region and had its own division of labor, and the "Xuelong 2" gave play to its advantages of breaking ice and mainly used experimental icebreaking; the "Xuelong" gave play to its tonnage advantage, mainly based on material unloading and logistics support.

It is reported that the "Xuelong 2" adopts a two-way ice-breaking design, the ice-breaking ability is stronger, and it is the world's first two-way polar scientific investigation icebreaker, which can continuously break the ice at a speed of 2 to 3 knots under the conditions of "ice thickness of 1.5 meters and snow thickness of 0.2 meters".

Advancing into the "inaccessible pole" is only to better pulse the earth: the polar environment is primitive, rarely affected by human activities, has the function of "indicator", and many climate change phenomena are more obvious here. A series of changes such as ice shelf collapse, glacier melting, sea level rise, species disappearance, severe ozone depletion, and plastic particle pollution are closely related to the environment in which we live, and these are even more shocking in the process of Antarctica. Antarctica is also a huge natural "cold storage", an important storage place for fresh water in the world, with about 70% of the earth's fresh water resources.

Due to their special geographical location, the poles also have the function of a "master switch", which influences the trend of global climate change through ocean currents. In addition to climate and environmental research and astronomical observation, interdisciplinary research has also become a major trend in Antarctica, such as remote sensing and oceanography, glaciology, geophysics, space physics and other cross-research.

The rate of human destruction of the earth is unprecedented, so environmental protection, species protection, and mineral/water conservation on the frozen "seventh continent" of Antarctica have become a major focus. At present, 30 countries in the world have established more than 150 scientific research bases and more than 100 summer research stations in Antarctica to carry out multidisciplinary comprehensive investigation and research, and those areas contain countless scientific mysteries and information. Antarctic scientific research plays an irreplaceable key role in the study of global change, especially in the study of global climate change.