How to Travel to the Most Remote Office on Earth

WIRED

02-07-2025

Jul 2, 2025 9:00 AM Commuting to Concordia research station in Antarctica takes days—it's more remote than the International Space Station. Here's how to get there. Photograph: ESA/IPEV/PNRA - B. Healey
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.
This station is just a logistical one; it's not meant to host people, and everyone who stays there blocks others from coming in. It's a real logistical challenge for the people working there, so they want us to leave as fast as possible. But the weather is so unpredictable that you can't just take a plane and go inland. You need to wait until the weather is almost stable, and the pilot says, 'I'm ready to fly,' because he has the final word.
I still had my data problem from before, and I was trying to connect to the internet. There, it was like the internet of the '90s—you know, beep beep beep . I tried to log in, and finally, after maybe two or three hours, on one computer, I got to the stage where it said, 'OK, I'm going to log in to your account so you can download your stuff. Please give me your phone number. I'm going to send you an SMS to log in.' That was the double verification, and it wasn't working because, obviously, there's no phone service. So I couldn't access my data because of this double verification.
Finally, we took a plane. This one is smaller, a Basler BT-67 plane, which comes from Canada to fly within Antarctica and then goes back to Canada at the end of the season. This plane ride took four hours. It's a non-pressurized plane. You make sure to put all your clothes on, to be ready to go out in Concordia, because it's about minus 30 Celsius. We were super afraid.
The first thing after landing in Concordia was this feeling of dizziness, vertigo. What I didn't know when I arrived there is that you're at 3,200 meters above sea level, so you feel the altitude a little bit. After four hours in this small plane, where you just see flatness of white, and nothing else, you come down to Concordia.
From a distance, you see the station. That station seems so small because there's literally nothing around it—no mountains, nothing. And you have this little boulot dans l'estomac , as we say in French, like butterflies, because, you know, 'Wow, that's going to be my home for one year.' We came down to Concordia station, and the crew that had just spent a year and was now leaving the station, was awaiting us and welcomed us very warmly. They got us inside the station because we were sometimes afraid of high-altitude sickness. They want to make sure no one is carrying anything heavy, that we're not doing physical activity. They told us, 'Just stay calm for the next few days.'
Concordia is accessible only by aircraft during the summer months, from November to February. In winter, temperatures plummet to minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Photograph: ESA/IPEV/PNRA - A. Kumar
The station is made of two towers, with 18 faces for each tower. It's basically white, with a little bit of orange, and that's it. You enter through a tunnel between the two towers. You take off your boots and leave all your stuff there. It's quite small. Then you can go to the left, which is the 'calm tower.' Inside, you have the dormitories, the laboratories, and the hospital. It has three floors. The middle floor is dormitories, and the upper floor is laboratories. It's called the 'calm tower' to keep it calm. Then we go to the other tower, on the right side from the entrance. It has the technical stuff. On the second floor, there's the video room for movies and the sports room. On the top, you have the living room, the eating area, and the kitchen.
In five minutes, you've done the tour of your new home. It's super impressive because you think, 'Someone had to build this in the middle of nowhere. Someone had to take the first steps.' And this is just incredible. So many people go to Antarctica with nothing. We arrive here, and we have the luxury of having this building to protect us from this environment.
It's so out of this world to be there. We've seen a lot of pictures of Antarctica, and we've probably read a lot of books, but you've never been in the center of Antarctica, which is quite different. There's no life—no birds, no trees—there's literally nothing, nothing but ice and wind.