Moscow

The 13 crew members expected to arrive this week at Russia's Mirny Observatory on the Antarctic coast are likely to be tired and cold, and with good reason. When the Vostok research base at which they work ran out of fuel and supplies last month, the team was forced to take their Soviet-era trucks on a 1,400-kilometre journey across one of the coldest regions on Earth.

Vostok, which is near to the south geomagnetic pole, was abandoned for the winter on 28 February after bad weather prevented a convoy carrying fuel and supplies from reaching it. Valery Lukin of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, says that trips to the base have been disrupted since a supply ship attempting to reach Mirny became trapped in ice last year.

The crew's convoy was briefly stranded on 5 March when one of the trucks broke down, but it is expected to arrive at Mirny by 15 March. The same personnel are scheduled to reopen the base in early November, at the start of Antarctica's spring.

Lukin says that a proposed international project to drill into Lake Vostok, 4 km beneath the ice (see Nature 415, 828–830; 2002) will not be affected. Biologists suspect that the lake, which been isolated for millions of years, could contain life.

The base has shut three times before in its 45-year history, although two of those closures were in the past decade. Lukin denies suggestions that a lack of government money is to blame. “This in no way means that Russia can't financially support its base,” he says. “It is related to the climatic conditions.”