Starting in 2010, multiple locations ofAntarctica have been uploaded onGoogle Street View. Two images were initially uploaded that year of theHalf Moon Island. Two years later, the site collaborated with the Polar Geospatial Center at theUniversity of Minnesota and theNew Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust to take panoramic images of landmarks such asShackleton's Hut andScott's Hut.
Other images of sites such as theBeacon Valley were added the following year. Google Street View subsequently released a virtual tour of theSouth Pole Telescope under a collaboration with theUniversity of Melbourne, and images ofKing George Island were uploaded in 2020 by a personal project headed by brothers Nicolás and Santiago Bianchi.
Google Street View is a technology featured inGoogle Maps andGoogle Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in five cities in the United States,[1] and continues to capture images in countries all over the world for the site.[2]
The Geo Team for Google Street View wanted to "challenge" themselves to record more remote locations. As a result, alongside Brazil and Ireland, coverage for Antarctica on Google Street View was announced byGoogle on September 30, 2010 through a blog post byBrian McClendon, the vice president of engineering at Google Earth and Maps. It was the last continent to be added to the function.[1] Two images were taken of theHalf Moon Island in theSouth Shetland Islands in Antarctica during a visit by McClendon and his wife were added at the time; one image withchinstrap penguins and one image showing the island'scoast.[3][4]
In 2012, as part of Google Maps' World Wonders project, they collaborated with the Polar Geospatial Center at theUniversity of Minnesota and theNew Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust to take panoramic views of select locations in Antarctica using afish eye lens for the site.[‡ 1][5] The captures includedCape Royds' penguinrookery, theSouth Pole Telescope,Shackleton's Hut,Scott's Hut, and theCeremonial South Pole.[‡ 1][6] Alex Starns, a worker on the project, stated that the reason they started the project was to make information regarding Antarctica be accessible to other remote locations.[7] The following year, Google Street View released four new captures of locations in the continent, including the Arena Valley,Beacon Valley,Hidden Valley, and Camp Royds.[8][9]
In a collaboration with theUniversity of Melbourne, Google Street View released a virtual tour of the South Pole Telescope in 2014. It includes the telescope itself and other surrounding telescopes in the Dark Sector of theAmundsen–Scott South Pole Station.[10] Later on, users were allowed to submit their own photos to the site.[11] With support from theUruguayan Antarctic Institute and sponsorships such asGoPro, brothers Nicolás and Santiago Bianchi had initially planned to take images ofKing George Island for the feature. Although they had to initially cancel due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, the project took place the following year during one of the Institute's trips to dispose of trash and deliver supplies. Five gigabytes of data regarding the images were generated per kilometer, and the images were uploaded with the approval of Google Street View.[12][13]
In the text, these references are preceded by a double dagger (‡):
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