"This is my sixth season of travelling to the station," he tells me, "but the first where the station will be fully functional."

The Belgian polar explorer will be leading two teams - one of geographers, one of geologists. The first team goes this month and next, spreading out to the coast to explore new terrain. "That's quite a challenge for us," says Hubert.

Hubert's job is to open up the station, which has been empty since the Antarctic winter began in June, and make sure everything goes smoothly and safely. "From what we've seen of the satellite photos, the station is looking pretty good," Hubert says. "We'll be bringing field guides for the scientists, as well as two young engineers to carry out work on the station itself."

In January, they'll set out to open up a new route to the Antarctic plateau. The Princess Elisabeth is the only station at altitude in Antarctica, and it's also the world's first zero-emissions research station, using a specially developed "smart grid" to balance energy supply and demand. The whole station runs on one-third of the energy consumption that would be considered normal, using entirely wind and solar energy.

That zero-emission aim - it hasn't quite been achieved yet, but this season could see the breakthrough - is one of the station's most important aspects. "We get companies asking if they can develop new technologies for us, so in fact we're stimulating the move towards better energy efficiency," Hubert says. "The station is a prototype, but it's constantly evolving. It sends a strong message that's good for the country - that Belgium had the vision to make it happen."

Zipping across Antarctica
There will also be other scientists travelling to the Pole to carry out different types of research. "At least this year I won't have to set out the tents for them like we did last year," Hubert says with a laugh.

One of them is Steven Goderis, a geochemist in the department of earth sciences at the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels (VUB). Together with colleague Vinciane Debaille from the French-speaking Free University of Brussels (ULB), he'll be out hunting meteorites on the vast icy plains of Antarctica.

"It'll be similar to what we were doing last year," Goderis tells me, "only this time we're going to a different part of the continent. Last we were working in the Sør Rondane mountains, to the east of the station. This year we'll be on the Nansen ice field about 100 kilometres south of the Princess Elisabeth."

The South Pole, he explains, is prime hunting ground for meteorites, which are basically pieces of space rock produced when planets break up that fall occasionally into our atmosphere. Anything that doesn't burn up immediately falls to earth as a meteorite. About 300,000-400,000 tonnes of space rock enters our atmosphere every year, though most of it doesn't make it to earth.

Meteorites, in fact, fall all over the world, but since much of our planet's surface is water, mountain, desert or jungle, they're not so easy to find. In Antarctica, however, they're falling onto pure white ice.

"The ice in Antarctica migrates constantly towards the sea, and, as it moves, the wind ablates the ice [scrapes off a top layer] making it more likely for meteorites to be exposed," Goderis explains. In addition, once fallen, the meteorites are better preserved in the ice than in other environments.

To find them, the team set out on their snowmobiles, travelling in a V-formation and keeping their eyes peeled. "It can be pretty hard, going along at a 2,000-metre altitude with the wind in your face for eight hours a day," he says.

Goderis started off as a geologist but became interested in the solar system while studying impact craters where huge meteorites had landed. "Part of the study was to determine what different types of meteorites were responsible," he says, "where they came from, and why they fell to earth."

Last year, the meteorite-hunters picked up about 600 fragments, ranging in size from a few millimetres to one of five kilos. "The samples are sent to Japan, where they have a long history of dealing with meteorite fragments. They were actually the first to discover fragments in Antarctica," Goderis says.

There are about 30,000 fragments of meteorites currently in museum collections around the world, including the Natural History Museum in Brussels. About two-thirds of them were found in Antarctica. "After their primary evaluation and classification of what we find, the VUB and ULB may take back some samples for geochemical analysis."

As a geologist, Goderis is used to being out and about; the discipline involves as much field work as it does lab research. But the South Pole is something else. "I got the chance to go last year, and I couldn't refuse," he says. "The Polar Foundation has a training programme for scientists, and we're also trained by the Belgian army, who have to live and work in all kinds of different environments".

Belgium's Princess Elisabeth station, meanwhile, provides a relatively comfortable environment for those who may be less accustomed than Alain Hubert to the planet's least welcoming environment. "It's a really nice station, a really beautiful construction," Hubert says. "And it's an example internationally. People from all over the world are really interested in how it's evolving, and that's a step in the right direction".

Research at the bottom of the earth
Along with the hunting of meteorites, various other scientific research projects will be carried out during this year's expedition to the Princess Elisabeth station.
> The Belatmos project will study the atmosphere around the station, looking at ozone levels, UV radiation and aerosol particles
> A researcher for Belgium's Beldiva project will study the biodiversity of microbes around the station
> A team from Brussels' ULB and the US' University of Washington will look at the movements of the ice mass - the planet's largest - and effects on sea levels
> A researcher from the University of Cologne will study the hydrologic cycle, from the evaporation of water to the formation of clouds to the snowfall