This June 22, 2016 handout photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation shows a Twin Otter aircraft on a medical evacuation flight taxiing on the skiway at NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Two sick workers were evacuated from a remote US research station near the South Pole on June 22 in a risky rescue mission carried out in the dead of Antarctica's winter, a US official said. A Twin Otter turboprop plane flew in dark and cold conditions to pick up the workers from the Amundsen-Scott station, about 250 meters from the geographic South Pole, a spokesman for the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Peter West told AFP. The plane's crew and a medical team had made the 10-hour journey to the South Pole in the middle of Antarctica's 24-hour winter on Tuesday night to reach the unidentified patients, who could not be treated on site. / AFP PHOTO / National Science Foundation / Robert SCHWARZ / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION / ROBERT SCHWARZ" - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS ROBERT SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images
