Vernadsky Research Base Антарктична станція Академік Вернадський
—  Research station  —
Country	United Kingdom,  Ukraine (Since 1996)
Territory	-
Established	1953
Population
• Total	- 10
Time zone	-
Postal code	-
Website	uac.gov.ua

Vernadsky Research Base in 2013

Vernadsky Research Base (Ukrainian: Академік Вернадський; Akademik Vernadsky) is a Ukrainian Antarctic Station at Marina Point on Galindez Island in the Argentine Islands, Antarctica.

History [edit]

United Kingdom [edit]

The station was established by the British Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey as Base F ^[1] or "Argentine Islands" on Winter Island in 1947. The main hut, built on the site of an earlier British Graham Land Expedition hut, was named "Wordie House" after Sir James Wordie, a member of Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition who visited during its construction.^[2]

Wordie House has been restored and is designated as Historic Site and Monument No. 62.^[3] The base moved to the present site on adjacent Galindez Island in May 1954 where the main building was named "Coronation House".

The base was renamed Faraday Station in August 1977 in honour of British scientist Michael Faraday.^[4]

Ukraine [edit]

Ukraine took over the operation of the base in February 1996,^[4] which was sold by the UK for a symbolic one pound. The cost of disassembling the base with good environmental practices and standards would be too costly. The Ukrainian Antarctic Center continues a programme of meteorology, upper atmospheric physics, geomagnetism, ozone, seismology, glaciology, ecology, biology and physiology research.^[5]

The building [edit]

The station consists of nine buildings standing on rock foundations. A 1961 extension at the east end of the hut provided living quarters for 15 people. Major alterations in 1980 updated the living and working accommodation. A two-storey extension provides sleeping accommodation for 24 people, a clothing store, boiler room and reverse osmosis plant on the ground floor. Upstairs are a lounge, library, dining room, gift store and kitchen. The lounge is considered the southernmost public bar in the world, where visitors can purchase $3 shots of vodka (made on the premises). The old part of the building is now mostly laboratories and work rooms, together with the surgery and washrooms. The generator shed was erected in 1978-79, with the old one now used as a frozen food store and a carpenter's workshop. Other buildings include two non-magnetic buildings, a balloon launching shed (now skidoo garage), and a general store.^[2]

Footnotes [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Vernadsky Station

• (English) Vernadsky Station website
• (English) Official website National Antarctic Scientific Center
• (English) COMNAP Antarctic Facilities
• (English) COMNAP Antarctic facilities Map

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Ukrainian Wikipedia. (June 2012) Click [show] on the right to read important instructions before translating. View a machine-translated version of the Ukrainian article. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|uk|Академік Вернадський}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Coordinates: 65°14′44.44″S 64°15′28.17″W / 65.2456778°S 64.2578250°W / -65.2456778; -64.2578250

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