At around 11:00 on August 9th, China's 16th Arctic Ocean Expedition Team boarded the "Xuelong 2" and began its first ice station survey operation in the central area of the Arctic Ocean near 84 degrees north latitude, marking the official start of a comprehensive investigation of ice stations that lasted for about half a month.
It is reported that the Arctic Ocean exploration is organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and jointly carried out by four ships, namely "Xuelong", "Xuelong 2", "Polar" and "Exploration 3". Among them, "Xuelong" and "Xuelong 2" will cooperate to carry out ice station investigation tasks. The "Xuelong" completed the investigation of 12 ice stations on August 7th.

Accompanied by storms and cold weather, and lonely unknowns, the pace of China's polar scientific exploration has never stopped. Recently, reporters approached these people who are walking towards "difficulties" and silently persevering, to see how they embrace the "greatness of the country", bravely overcome difficulties, promote polar security capabilities, scientific research strength, and international governance to a new level, and continue to contribute to China's polar scientific research cause.
In April of this year, at the domestic base of the Shanghai Polar Expedition, Zhao Yanping, director of the Polar Ship Management Center of the China Polar Research Center (China Polar Research Institute), looked at the "Xuelong" ship that had completed the expedition mission, with a slight smile on his mouth and a smile on his face.
In 2004, Zhao Yanping graduated from university and the "Xuelong" became his gateway to his dream. He started as an intern and grew into the captain of the "Snow Dragon" at the age of 32. During this time, he participated in 11 Antarctic expeditions and 2 Arctic expeditions, with a total voyage of over 300000 nautical miles.
In 2014, Zhao Yanping led the crew on China's 31st Antarctic exploration mission. During the inspection, Zhao Yanping led the crew of the "Xuelong" ship and surveyors from the maritime department to conduct measurements in a small boat near the sea area of Nanyan Island. A new anchorage was discovered 0.5 nautical miles away from Nanyan Island, with a measured water depth of 30 to 50 meters. Subsequently, he commanded the "Snow Dragon" to anchor in the area, providing great convenience for the subsequent construction of the new station.
Zhao Yanping candidly stated, "The country has entrusted us with such an important task, which is not only a trust but also a responsibility. We must complete the task well, especially at critical moments, we must be able to withstand and rely on it
On March 1, 2025, the world's first large-scale polar clean energy system was officially put into operation at the Qinling Station in Antarctica, China. At the moment, in the laboratory of Taiyuan University of Technology, ten thousand miles away, Sun Hongbin, an academician of the CAS Member and president of Taiyuan University of Technology, is concentrating on the real-time operation data
For a long time, over 95% of the energy supply for global Antarctic scientific research has relied on fuel, and high pollution, carbon emissions, and transportation costs have become bottlenecks restricting the sustainable development of polar scientific research. Sun Hongbin proposed to connect wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, hydrogen production equipment, energy storage equipment, and electricity loads into a huge intelligent network, and build a polar "wind solar hydrogen storage load" multi energy complementary clean energy system.
However, in order for the system to be truly applied on a large scale in Antarctica, two challenges must be overcome - one is to keep the equipment "alive" in extreme environments for a long time, and the other is to maintain a balanced operation of system energy.
In 2021, Sun Hongbin led a team from Taiyuan University of Technology to start tackling key issues. The following year, he was appointed as the Chief Scientist of the Polar Clean Energy Project at the China Polar Research Center.
At the moment when the system was officially put into operation, Sun Hongbin said he was "very excited" because China's polar scientific research bid farewell to 40 years of dependence on diesel and took the lead in entering a new era of green energy.
Polar sea ice is an amplifier and indicator of global climate change, and its changing patterns are crucial for Arctic climate change, Arctic waterway utilization, and international governance. In the 1950s and 1960s, the international research on polar sea ice formed a system.
In the view of Lei Ruibo, Deputy Director of the Key Laboratory of Polar Science of the Ministry of Natural Resources, "the weaker the field, the more we need to take responsibility. Over the past 20 years, he has participated in more than 10 important scientific research missions both domestically and internationally, and has worked in the field for over 1000 days. During a field assignment, Lei Ruibo suffered severe frostbite to his fingers due to lack of experience in cold protection. Despite the surgery, he persevered until the successful completion of his 485 day winter mission; In 2018, during China's 9th Arctic scientific expedition, he led a team to overcome multiple challenges and successfully deployed China's independently developed "Arctic Sea Ice Air Unmanned Ice Station Observation System".
In 2008, relying on the unique environment of high altitude hypoxia in Xizang, relevant departments created a special position for high-altitude adaptive training of Antarctic scientific research team members. Since then, Zha Xiciren, the deputy leader of the Xizang Autonomous Region Mountaineering Team, has shouldered the heavy task of taking the lead in the altitude training of 13 batches of Antarctic scientific research teams, and escorted the scientific research team members to the Antarctic with daily persistence.
Crack self rescue and rescue training are core subjects for preparing for the Antarctic scientific expedition. Zaxi Ciren accurately reconstructed dangerous scenes such as Antarctic ice fissures falling and people being trapped, organized team members to conduct practical exercises, proficiently mastered self rescue and mutual rescue abilities in extreme situations, and built a strong safety defense line to deal with the complex dangers in Antarctica.
Zhang Guangtao, deputy director of Jiaozhou Bay Marine Ecosystem National Field Research Station, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, focused on zooplankton. Zhang Guangtao was the first in China to initiate full species identification of planktonic animals in the Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean at the community level, and completed their Chinese naming. This fundamental work is equivalent to giving polar plankton a "household registration", where every species must be clearly and distinctly recorded in terms of its name, appearance, and distribution.
For the younger generation of polar researchers, Zhang Guangtao hopes that they will start from "better understanding, protecting, and utilizing the polar regions" and "a community with a shared future for mankind", and pay more attention to the urgency of polar ecological security while exploring. (Outlook New Era)