José María Sobral was the first Argentine to set foot on Antarctica in 1902, where he spent two seasons with the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of Otto Nordenskiöld.

[12] In 1815, Guillermo Brown, an Irish-born Argentine Marine Commodore serving in the naval forces of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, began a campaign to intercept the Spanish fleet in the Pacific Ocean.

When they were crossing Cape Horn aboard the Hercules and Trinidad, strong winds pushed them to parallel 65° South.

This expedition received support, and in exchange, offered the services of the Argentine Navy to deliver scientific data and zoological collections.

On the way through Buenos Aires, Lieutenant Jose Maria Sobral boarded the ship Antarctic on 21 December 1901.

It set out on 8 October 1903 under the command of Lieutenant Julián Irizar to find and rescue members of the expedition who had been sheltering following the collapse of the Antarctic ship.

[15][16] The 1902 expedition built another hut in Hope Bay, which is also an Antarctic monument under the control of Esperanza Station.

[17][18] On 2 January 1904, Argentina acquired a weather station installed by Scotsman William Speirs Bruce, in Laurie Island in the South Orkneys, where there had been a crew of six men making scientific observations.

On 15 December 1927, the General Directorate of Post and Telegraph from Argentina informed the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union about their claims in Antarctica and other islands of the South Atlantic.

On 8 November 1942, Argentina laid claim to Antarctic land when an expedition under the command of the captain Alberto J. Oddera placed a cylinder containing a report and a flag on Deception Island.

[citation needed] On 5 March of the same year, the Argentine vessel ARA 1° de Mayo removed the British flag.

In 1946, the National Antarctic Commission set new limits for Argentine Antarctica between the Meridian 25° and 74° West (near the far east of the South Sandwich Islands).

9905 placed the administration of the Argentine Antarctic Sector with the maritime Governor of the National Territory of Tierra del Fuego.

[citation needed] The first continental Argentine base in Antarctica, the Almirante Brown Naval detachment, was opened in 1951.

On 1 February 1952, while building the Esperanza Base at Hope Bay, the first shooting war in Antarctica occurred when an Argentine team fired a machine gun over the heads of a civil team of British Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey workers and forced them to withdraw to their ship, the John Biscoe.

[25][26] On 17 January 1953, at Deception Island, the Refugio Teniente Lasala (a hut and a tent) was opened by the staff of the Argentine ship ARA Chiriguano.

On 15 February, 32 Royal Marines of the British frigate HMS Snipe, armed with Sten submachine guns, rifles, and tear gas, captured two Argentine sailors.

On 4 May 1955, the United Kingdom filed two lawsuits against Argentina and Chile respectively, in the International Court of Justice in The Hague to declare Argentine and Chilean claims on the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic areas invalid.

At the same time, the Argentine state-owned Aerolíneas Argentinas began passenger flights between Ushuaia and Sydney, landing at Marambio Base.

The first director of the Argentine Antarctic Institute, general Hernán Pujato, was the forerunner of the installation of the Fortín Sargento Cabral.

On 18 December 2012, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom announced that the southern part of the British Antarctic Territory (which included a portion of Argentine Antarctica) would be named Queen Elizabeth Land in honor of Queen Elizabeth II.

[35] In the interior of the continent, the climate is colder and drier due to the higher latitude, altitude, and strong continental influences.

[34] Due to the ice sheets and glaciers covering most of the region and the severity of the climate, the flora is sparse and limited only to coastal areas.

[34] The flag of Tierra del Fuego, which includes Argentine Antarctica, was adopted in 1999 as the result of a competition.

[39] Esperanza and Marambio are the largest Argentine bases, together holding 70 buildings, with a combined occupancy rate ranging from roughly 110 in winter to 250 in summer.

In 2022/23, the auxiliary vessels Puerto Argentino and Estrecho San Carlos were tasked to the mission, along with the icebreaker Almirante Irízar.

[43] María de las Nieves Delgado was the first Antarctic girl, born on 27 March 1978 at Esperanza Base.

By 1980, six more children were born at the base: Rubén Eduardo de Carli (21 September 1979), Francisco Javier Sosa (21 September 1979), Silvina Analía Arnouil (14 January 1980), José Manuel Valladares Solís (24 January 1980), Lucas Daniel Posse (4 February 1980) and María Sol Cosenza (3 May 1983).