{"id":231506,"date":"2015-07-21T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T14:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4d3808c3ba856206e4dea12879d88eba"},"modified":"2015-07-21T10:24:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T14:24:00","slug":"dark-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=231506","title":{"rendered":"Dark science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2015\/07\/dark_science\/15529899-1-eng-GB\/Dark_science_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThis modified container in Antarctica is part of the Franco\u2013Italian Concordia research station and is used to store snow samples \u2013and with temperatures regularly below \u201370\u00b0C no extra refrigeration is required. The environment around the mountain plateau does not get much more alien than this.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nESA-sponsored medical doctor Beth Healey is spending nine months in Concordia to run experiments for ESA in preparation of space exploration missions.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAs Concordia lies at the very southern point of Earth, the Sun does not rise above the horizon in winter and does not set in summer. The crew must live without sunlight for four months of the year. At 3200 m above sea level in the world\u2019s largest desert, the air in Concordia is very dry and holds less oxygen.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWith three weeks of darkness to go, Beth ventured outside with Italian scientist Giampietro Casasanta to collect and store samples. Giampietro is doing glaciology research while Beth is searching for extremophiles \u2013 organisms that can survive the extreme conditions found in Antarctica and on other planets or comets.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe trail of light in this image is from Giampietro\u2019s headlamp as he walked to the container, captured by the camera&#8217;s long exposure.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nRead more about Concordia on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Human_Spaceflight\/Concordia\">ESA website<\/a> and on the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esa.int\/concordia\/\">Concordia blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2015\/07\/dark_science\/15529899-1-eng-GB\/Dark_science_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThis modified container in Antarctica is part of the Franco\u2013Italian Concordia research station and is used to store snow samples \u2013and with temperatures regularly below \u201370\u00b0C no extra refrigeration is required. The environment around the mountain plateau does not get much more alien than this.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nESA-sponsored medical doctor Beth Healey is spending nine months in Concordia to run experiments for ESA in preparation of space exploration missions.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAs Concordia lies at the very southern point of Earth, the Sun does not rise above the horizon in winter and does not set in summer. The crew must live without sunlight for four months of the year. At 3200 m above sea level in the world\u2019s largest desert, the air in Concordia is very dry and holds less oxygen.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWith three weeks of darkness to go, Beth ventured outside with Italian scientist Giampietro Casasanta to collect and store samples. Giampietro is doing glaciology research while Beth is searching for extremophiles \u2013 organisms that can survive the extreme conditions found in Antarctica and on other planets or comets.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe trail of light in this image is from Giampietro\u2019s headlamp as he walked to the container, captured by the camera&#8217;s long exposure.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nRead more about Concordia on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Human_Spaceflight\/Concordia\">ESA website<\/a> and on the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esa.int\/concordia\/\">Concordia blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231521,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231506\/revisions\/231521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}