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Built on Feb.20, 1985, the station was named after the Chinese famous marvelous spectacle Great Wall. Mr. Jiang Zemin, the former president of the People’s Republic of China, gave his handwriting station name on Dec.31, 1997. Erecting at the southern tip of Fildes Peninsula of King George Island in the Shetland Islands of West Antarctica at 62o12′59″S, 58o57′52″W, it is 17501. 949 km away from Beijing, the capital of China, with which its azimuth is 170o38′27″.
The station area is 2 km long from south to north and 1.26 km wide from east to west, occupying a land area of 2.52 km2 with an elevation of 10 m on the average. The Station has 15 buildings of all kinds covering a total floor space of about 5000 m2, including the two-floor living building, the power house, No.1 building and No.2 building, the building of storage, garage, meteorology, communications and science as well as several other buildings for specific scientific research such as observation rooms for tide, earthquake, absolute value of geomagnetic, upper-atmosphere physics, satellite Doppler and the geomagnetic detection room.
The Station is equipped with adequate living facilities, which can guarantee normal scientific research and life living for the expedition personnel. It has the capacity of accommodating 80 summering research personnel and 40 wintering research personnel. At present, the wintering team is always composed of 12 members and the number of summering team depends on the requirement of scientific program. Controlled by electric heaters, the rooms temperature is kept generally at 16~20℃. The full automatic cold and hot water supply system can ensure supply of warm water at about 18℃ to the kitchen, dishwashers and toilets and hot water at 44℃ to the bathroom where the expedition members and visitors can enjoy hot water bath at round the clock. The means of transportation at the Station are complete with a dozen of vehicles and 2 one-engine Zodiac boats, which can satisfy the needs of transportation, construction and scientific research. Installed with three 128 kw diesel generator, the power house can supply electricity to the Station area for 24 hours without interruption. The Station has a post office which handles the mailing business of personal letters and parcels. There has one or two doctors in the station all the year round, who are in charge of carrying out a medical check-up and treating ordinary diseases for the expedition members. People can also do physical exercise or play table-tennis and billiard or watch video program or go for various fitness and recreational activities after work.
The Station is equipped with Station B of the maritime communication satellite which is used for communication and contact with units at home and abroad.
Importance has been increasingly emphasized to the prevention of pollution and protection of the Antarctic environment by every country including China. Since its completion, the Station has been attaching great importance to the protection of the Antarctic environment. The Station is equipped with an integrated treatment system for domestic sewage and rubbish with a daily capacity of treating about 26 tons of sewage and 1 m3of rubbish, including a sewage treatment device, and incinerator, and automatic monitoring system and laboratory testing equipment.
The Station is like a small science city, where scientist can carry out not only meteorology, solid tide, satellite Doppler, seismic, geomagnetic absolute value and upper-atmospheric physics observations, but also integrated research, experiment, analysis and data processing in the labs of biology, radio transmission, geology, geomagnetics, as well as in the microcomputer room.
The members of the Chinese Antarctic Expedition have been making all the year round in the Chinese Great Wall Station routine observations on such subjects as meteorology, ionosphere, upper-atmospheric physics, geomagnetism and seismology, etc. During the austral summer period every year, apart from routine observations, in-situ scientific research is also carried out on geology, glaciology, biology, environmental science, human medicine and marine science, etc.
Real-time web camera in Great Wall Station:
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