14 February 2017:
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has successfully relocated its Halley VI Research Station to a new home on the Brunt Ice Shelf. The move was required to position the station upstream of a previously dormant ice chasm that began to show signs of growth in 2012. The base was designed to be relocatable, with a hydraulic leg and ski system, and operational teams have recently spent 13 weeks moving each of the station’s eight modules 23 km to the new location. The UK has operated a research station on the Brunt Ice Shelf since the late 1950s. The discovery in October 2016 of a new and unpredictable ice crack on the Brunt Ice Shelf some 17km to the north of the original station location meant the Director of BAS, Dame Jane Francis, took the decision not to winter a team at Halley VI in 2017 as a safety precaution. Halley will be re-opened in November – the start of the next Antarctic summer season.