They brought several tons of equipment—thanks to the VXE-6 airplanes—and achieved the planned ice-coring campaign down to 980 m bringing to surface, and later on in their labs for study, ice samples 45,000 to 50,000 years old.

The camp, with a maximum summer population of 18, was operated and maintained by four employees of ITT Antarctic Services and one US Navy medical corpsman.

Dome C does not experience the katabatic winds typical of the coastal regions of Antarctica because of its elevated location and its relative distance from the edges of the Antarctic Plateau.

However, sky coverage is less than at lower latitude locations as northern celestial hemisphere objects never rise or are too low above the horizon.

[4] They determined the median seeing (measured with a Differential Image Motion Monitor placed on top of an 8.5-metre-high (28 ft) tower) to be 1.3±0.8 arcseconds.

This figure was taken with an instrument insensitive to near-ground turbulence and so it is comparable to the 0.35 arcseconds Agabi et al. measured for "free atmospheric seeing".

The 2004 experiments to measure the astronomical conditions at the site were unattended, controlled by a computer system that had to supervise the generation of its own electricity using a jet-fuel powered Stirling engine.

To name a few of the common challenges that the Concordia crew and Astronauts have to face, they both live in isolation and confinement, in different atmospheric pressure conditions, with an abnormal day/night cycle plus several effects on their everyday life, such as sleep difficulties.

The European Space Agency (ESA) hires a Medical Doctor each year to winterover at Concordia Station and facilitate biomedical experiments on the crew.

These experiments are selected over a variety of tests proposed to ESA by European universities and participation from the rest of the crew is voluntary (and highly appreciated).

It is important to mention that this research aims not only at improving living conditions for Astronauts in a future human journey to Mars, but the results are also applied directly on society - they help doctors devise therapies for patients with similar difficulties in Europe and elsewhere.