Abstract

From the metropolitan laboratory up to the research station, all the scientific and technical gestures surrounding Antarctica are part of maintenance work. They contribute to maintaining Antarctica as a place of science, to hold it in its authenticity (Denis and Pontille, 2022:247), to preserve its intrinsic values (Summerson and Tin, 2018). How does the scientific infrastructure maintain Antarctica as a territory-laboratory? For this presentation, we propose to focus on an ongoing fieldwork started in March 2024 alongside ASTEP , an exoplanet observation program from Concordia. Since the first wintering of the French-Italian Station, astronomy has been developed in Concordia, taking advantage of the characteristics of the place. The all-day night and the quality of the sky allows continuous observation that aren’t achievable from earth, but require a lot of on-site and by distance maintenance. Following a winter-over observation campaign, this presentation will try to explore the relations developing between the scientist, the telescope, the data and the place as a territory-laboratory.