Antarctica's Vostok Station sits directly above a massive lake buried under 4,000 meters of ice for 15 million years.

Lake Vostok is the largest of Antarctica's nearly 400 known subglacial lakes, measuring about 250 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide. It was first suggested to exist by Russian geographer Andrey Kapitsa based on seismic soundings taken during Soviet Antarctic expeditions in 1959 and 1964. Its existence was finally confirmed in 1993 through a combination of airborne ice-penetrating radar and spaceborne radar altimetry.The lake is located beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet at a depth of approximately 3,748 meters. The water remains liquid because the massive weight of the overlying ice creates high pressure that lowers the freezing point of water. Additionally, the Earth's internal geothermal heat warms the lake bed, maintaining a water temperature of around -3 degrees Celsius. This environment has been isolated from the Earth's atmosphere for at least 14 to 15 million years.In 2012, Russian scientists successfully drilled into the lake for the first time, retrieving water samples from the surface layer. Preliminary analysis of these samples revealed DNA from over 3,500 different organisms, including bacteria and complex multicellular species. This discovery is vital for astrobiology, as the conditions in Lake Vostok mimic those found on Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA and other space agencies study these findings to develop technology for future missions seeking life in our solar system.