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A Glimpse into Life at Summit Station
The first time I stepped out of a plane onto the Greenland ice sheet, the cold hit me like nothing I had experienced before. Coming from Colorado, I’ve learned to enjoy being outdoors in the freezing temperatures of winter, but this was extreme. It was early May 2024 at Summit Station, one of the National Science Foundation’s research outposts in Greenland, and the conditions were particularly cold for spring: minus-40 degrees with 20-mph winds, creating a wind chill of a brisk 75 below zero Fahrenheit.
At 10,500 feet of elevation, the dry, razor-sharp air doesn’t seep into your bones — it makes you feel like you are being freeze-dried in real time. I can only describe the short 300-foot walk from the plane to the station’s main building, the “Big House,” as humbling. I had to remind myself that my job for the next six weeks as the station medic wasn’t just to survive in these extreme conditions, it was to keep the crew physically and mentally healthy, living in one of the most remote research stations on Earth.
Science on the Ice
Summit is a vital hub for international climate, atmospheric and space science. It began in 1989 as a cluster of tents for scientists on a mission to drill through the ice to the bedrock nearly two miles below. Today, it includes several buildings housing laboratories, crew quarters and heavy machinery. In summer, up to 50 scientists, mechanics and support staff live and work here. In the winter low season, five people remain in the dark and fierce cold to maintain the equipment and ongoing research amid blizzards, surviving on stored supplies with no resupply flights from October to March.
This remote research station and its intrepid inhabitants support efforts to better understand our planet, its changing climate and the universe. Researchers track atmospheric gases like methane, monitor weather and the changing climate, and study subatomic particles that bombard the Earth from space at nearly the speed of light, slowing down enough to be detected after going through hundreds of feet of ice. Countless projects like these help researchers better understand weather patterns, polar climate changes and fundamental questions about the universe.
But experiments also mean exposure to dangerous temperatures and working under a sun that never sets during the summer months. Scientists deploy sensitive equipment miles from camp, traveling by snowmobile and sled, often in fierce cold, and work with drill teams to extract ice from thousands of feet below. Without the sunset or sunrise in summer, days and weeks blur together like the miles of white snow in all directions.
Keeping People Healthy in Extremes
These conditions at Summit offer a unique opportunity to study how extreme, remote environments affect human health — insights that are directly relevant to spaceflight. My research focuses on astronaut health and my time at Summit helped illuminate the medical and operational challenges crews might face during missions beyond Earth.
Medical care at the station is limited to basic medications and a few lifesaving tools. As an emergency physician, I was the only provider — no nurses, paramedics or consultants. In the event of a serious medical emergency, I would need to rely on nonmedical crew members, trained to assist in stabilizing a patient until help could arrive. That could take days or even weeks in summer and might be impossible for months during winter — a sobering parallel to the realities of lunar or interplanetary missions.
I worked closely with the crew to plan and rehearse responses to a range of scenarios: structural fires, hypothermia, frostbite, even polar bear encounters. Fortunately, the people who take jobs in these environments are experienced, self-reliant and highly capable. Summit provided a powerful analogue for how to structure, train and support future space crews operating far from Earth — where resilience and teamwork are as critical as the technology available.
The Doldrums of Isolation
In extreme environments like Summit Station, it’s easy to assume that the crew’s physical health would be the biggest challenge. But in reality, psychological health can be much more formidable. Living in close quarters and extreme conditions for weeks or months with the same people and limited outside contact tests even the most resilient individuals.
There’s a strange contradiction: People report feeling both socially isolated and overstimulated, surrounded constantly by the same few individuals. At polar stations in Antarctica, physical fights have broken out among crew members in recent years. In one striking case, a crew member at a Russian base allegedly stabbed a colleague over a book spoiler.
Astronauts on a mission to Mars would face similar psychological challenges, which is why isolation research has become more important over the past few decades. The trip to Mars will require astronauts to spend months in the close quarters of a spacecraft, followed by isolation amid the harsh conditions of the planet itself.
Fortunately, researchers are able to use isolated environments — like Summit — all over the world to plan and prepare for these upcoming missions. At Summit, crew members go through extensive hiring processes that include physical and mental health checks. The majority of hires have worked in other remote and extreme locations, such as Alaska or the Antarctic. Plus, everyone has an X factor, this intangible resiliency that helps them stay positive during stressful situations like delays in resupply, water restrictions or interpersonal conflicts.
Despite the stress, the mood during my deployment in the summer of 2024 was overwhelmingly positive and, dare I say it, fun. To help keep the staff healthy, there is a focus on promoting healthy lifestyles and wellness among the crew. In 2023, the gym and recreation tent had been renovated to encourage more exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to reduce stress and improve crew cohesion.
On-site leaders maintain morale through social events and check in with each person at Summit. As in many remote stations, the kitchen staff may be the most vital contributors to morale: The comfort of a hot, well-prepared meal after working in the cold for hours cannot be overstated. These dynamics parallel the realities of long-duration space missions, where limited medical resources, environmental stress and months without evacuation options are the norm.
Understanding how people adapt — or struggle — in conditions at Summit can help in designing missions, selecting crews and developing technologies to support astronaut health in the future.
A Vision for the Future
Summit is more than a research station. It’s a window into the psychology of isolation. Ultimately, the lessons learned at Summit Station extend far beyond Greenland — benefiting not only climate science and space exploration but also teaching us about human endurance, collaboration and innovation in some of the world’s most extreme environments.
