Dignitaries who attended the ceremony include Chen Lianzeng, Vice-chief of the State Bureau of Oceanography (SBO), key officers from the SBO-Shanghai branch, and head officials from other participating departments in Shanghai.

Returning from the Antarctic expedition were 137 team members, including five foreign scientists, and members from the 15th expedition who spent the past winter living and working in the Chinese antarctic research base station Zhongshan ("Middle Mountain").

The 16th Antarctic research expedition is the last of this century. The team successfully completed research tasks, and restocked supplies and performed maintenance at both Chinese base stations Zhongshan and Changcheng ("Great Wall").

The expedition team spent 44 days in field studies at Grove Mountains. During that time the team had encountered extreme weather conditions, including blizzards, on several occasions. Key accomplishments are:

• Collecting large volume of data which enabled the production of a 1:25,000 scale topographical map of the 110 sq. km. core area of Grove Mountains.
• Discovering a new meteorite strewn field at the bottom of a cliff and collecting 28 meteorites.
• Observing and collecting rock, soil, ice and air samples in ice crevices.

After completing the task of "One Vessel Two (base) Stations", Xuelong left Antarctica on March 1. The vessel spent a total of 157 days navigating in the open sea and had travelled 27,053-naut. mi. (50,102-km.), thus setting a new range record.

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