Dale Andersen’s Astrobiology Antarctic Status Report: 9 January 2026: Building Our New Storage Facility At Novolazarevskaya Station

Hi Keith, we had another busy day moving and sorting gear. We hope to wrap that up tomorrow, and if everything comes together, we will head out on the traverse to Lake Untersee Sunday morning.

The weather has been pleasant—maybe a little too warm during the day—but sunny, with little wind for most of it, which makes the loading and sorting a lot more manageable.

One real improvement this season is that we now have a dedicated place to stage everything at the Ultima airbase: a new WeatherPort hut (about 30 × 30 × 13 ft). For the first time we will be able to keep all of our gear in one spot, including the snowmobiles and the ATV, instead of chasing equipment across multiple caches.

Just as important, it gives us a sheltered workspace when we need to lay things out, troubleshoot, or do maintenance without fighting the wind and drifting snow.

The storage facility next to ours (middle one in the top image) is twice as long (60 ft). Both structures are Weatherport structures by AKS Industries

Hopefully one more day of hard work and we are off to the mountains and to Untersee Oasis!

Cheers,
— Dale —

Interior view — Dale Andersen

As you can see it is pretty voluminous inside! We can also open the main door which allows us to drive in the snowmobiles or have larger items brought inside. A big shout out to the crew at the Ultima airbase for putting this up over the holidays for us!

Regularly updated webcam image from Novolazarevskaya Station, Antarctica https://novocam.aari.ru/

Keith’s note: Astrobiologist Dale Andersen is heading back in Antarctica at Lake Untersee in January-February 2026 for another field season of research.

Dale and I have been proving research updates – from Antarctica – since 1996. We think we actually had the first webserver (located in my old condo) updated from Antarctica. More details here: Dale Andersen’s 1996 Antarctic Field Research Photo Albums