Antarctica is the coldest, highest, driest and windiest of the continents – and the least hospitable to human life. But paradoxically, those same conditions combine to make the South Pole a unique scientific laboratory for the study of questions as diverse as "What is the origin of the Universe and how did it develop?" or "What is the status of global climate change?"

As an observing platform, Antarctica samples a vast region of the geospace environment and indeed provides a unique window for a number of important scientific reasons.

First of all, the geomagnetic polar cap above 80 degrees lies entirely on the continent. By contrast, the region above 80 degrees magnetic latitude in the northern hemisphere lies mainly in the Arctic ocean. Consequently, a distributed ground-based array in the Antarctic is the only practical way to provide near-global coverage at high geomagnetic latitudes.

Second, Antarctica also has an advantage over the northern polar regions in terms of optical observation of dayside auroral phenomena. This is due to the fact that the southern magnetic pole has a larger offset from the geographic pole than occurs in the north by nearly 10 degrees. Therefore, the high geographic latitudes in the south are well suited for dayside auroral studies in terms of the magnetic mapping to the aurora oval and also the extended periods of darkness at midday (e.g. South Pole has 3 months of total darkness during winter).

Finally, the Antarctic is relatively devoid of anthropogenic electromagnetic noise and interference. This has profound effect on the signal-to-noise ratio for a number of instruments including the searchcoil magnetometers, ELF/VLF receivers, riometers, and LF/HF/MF receivers.