Arrival Heights Laboratory is a research station in the

Antarctic Specially Protected Area An Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) is an area on the continent of Antarctica, or on nearby islands, which is protected by scientists and several different international bodies. The protected areas were established in 1961 under the Antarc ...

of Arrival Heights in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

, around 2 km from

McMurdo Station McMurdo Station is an American Antarctic research station on the southern tip of Ross Island. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), a branch of the National Science Foundation. The station is ...

. Its one of the facilities on Hut Point Peninsula along with

Scott Base Scott Base is a New Zealand Antarctic research station at Pram Point on Ross Island near Mount Erebus in New Zealand's Ross Dependency territorial claim. It was named in honour of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, RN, leader of two British exp ...

(NZ) and McMurdo Station (US).

History

Arrival Heights Laboratory is a green

shipping container A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated box design, corrugated b ...

building located within area 122 of the

. The area is an electromagnetic quite zone.

is located nearby. Scientists from New Zealand came to area 122 in 1959. An Auroral Radar Station was established by New Zealand at Arrival Heights in 1959. 15 tonnes of radar and building materials were brought to the area in February 1960, and Arrival Heights Laboratory was completed in two days. The initial purpose of the base was to understand the nature of the

aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

australis and its effect on radio communications. A new radar hut and storage facilities were constructed in December 1963. It currently researches upper atmosphere, trace gas monitoring, geomagnetic studies, and air quality surveys, most of which are conducted by

NIWA The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research or NIWA (), is a Crown Research Institute of New Zealand. Established in 1992, NIWA conducts research across a broad range of disciplines in the environmental sciences. It also maintai ...

Lidar Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...

s are hosted by Arrival Heights Laboratory for McMurdo Station. Equipment for low frequency radar and aurora studies is housed at the laboratory for universities. It houses both New Zealand and United States instrumentation, including a Dobson ozone spectrophotometer. The remote location makes the station particularly suitable for the use of instruments sensitive to local and external noise and electromagnetic interference.

References

Works cited

News

Web

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External links

2018 Yahoo news article calling Antarctica's "Area 51"
Outposts of the Ross Dependency Ross Island McMurdo Station {{Antarctica-stub