In November 2023, Jessica Studer, a 33-year-old research medical doctor and professional pianist from Bremgarten, Switzerland, prepared for her trip to Antarctica’s Concordia research station. Most work trips require a flight and a few nights in a hotel; hers would involve several days of travel and a year at the most remote outpost in the world.
Very few people have experience preparing for such an extreme journey. Concordia sits at 10,600 feet above sea level, with winter temperatures plummeting to minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s accessible only by aircraft during the summer months, from November to February, and the station is more isolated than the International Space Station, 240 miles above Earth's surface.
Studer spent a full year at the station conducting biomedical research for the European Space Agency. Concordia, operated by the French Polar Institute and Italy’s National Antarctic Research Program, serves in part as a simulation of a space station. During her time there, Struder studied the effects of isolation and confinement on herself and her crewmates to better understand what could happen to astronauts on long deep-space missions.
WIRED spoke with Studer about how she got to her very remote office.
Concordia research station, which consists of two towers connected by a tunnel, can serve as a simulation of a space station. Photograph: ESA/IPEV/PNRA - B. Healey
The journey started with a train to Paris, arriving at Gare de Lyon. I decided to take an Uber to the airport. That was super interesting, because Uber drivers always like to chat, and when you’re sitting in the car and say “I’m going to Antarctica for a year” they just look at you, with the three backpacks, like, You’re not serious, right?
At the Paris airport, I met some of the French crew for the first time. We flew to Christchurch, New Zealand, (with a layover in Singapore) and that’s when I really connected with the other two women going to Antarctica. We sat next to each other, discussing things like, “How is it going to be?” “What did you pack?” “Did you take more clothes than they’re giving us?” “Do you have special equipment?” It was a chat about everyone’s strategies, what we did, what we had, if we took medical supplies from the lab.
In the morning, we met in front of our hotel in Christchurch and took some small buses. The crew helped me carry my bags because I was still downloading data from my cloud to ensure I’d have it in Antarctica. So there I was, ready to go to the airport, still downloading. I was super stressed. At the airport, every bag is checked. They make sure you don’t have more kilograms than allowed, as that’s an issue for the plane. They also ensure you don’t have anything not allowed in Antarctica, like seeds, food, or plants. Basically, they want to make sure the continent stays as it is.
The plane is a Hercules C-130, super impressive. You arrive on this little bus, and you see this monstrous plane, and you enter through the back. Then you sit next to each other in these longitudinal seats. And then it’s departure for a seven-hour trip without toilets, with a little snack, a lot of sound around you—just sitting until you see, for the first time, a bit of Antarctica.
Concordia is more isolated than the International Space Station, 240 miles above Earth's surface. Photograph: ESA/IPEV/PNRA - A. Kumar
You see these wonderful ice shelves from the little windows you have there. The first thing you see when you step out is just ice everywhere. You’re really new to this environment, and sometimes it feels a little bit like being on another planet.
There’s an Italian station there, and we were supposed to stay for a day. But what we learned very fast is that, in French, we say, en Antarctique pas de pronostique, meaning, “no forecast in Antarctica,” because the weather is super unpredictable. So, instead of staying one night, we stayed almost a week.