The Air Force had been flying to Antarctica since 1952, when Vice-Commodore Gustavo A. Marambio flew a Lincoln there, and it had held the Matienzo base on the peninsula since 1961. What it lacked was a runway for wheeled aircraft that could be used all year round. English Wikipedia says two helicopters from the icebreaker ARA General San Martín surveyed Seymour Island on 25 November 1968; the strip was laid out on a plateau that Zona Militar puts at about 200 metres above the sea.

The Air Force’s own history dates the work from 30 August 1969, when a team under Vice-Commodore Olezza landed on the island, to 25 September, when the strip was declared open. Zona Militar, marking the fiftieth anniversary, says 23 Air Force men built it in extreme conditions and with improvised equipment. The base was formally inaugurated on 29 October 1969 and named after Marambio.

On 29 October 1969 a Fokker F27 Friendship of the Air Force, flown by Vice-Commodore Erwin Roberto Kern, took off from Río Gallegos and landed at Marambio on wheels. English Wikipedia calls it the first aircraft to take off from another continent and land in Antarctica on conventional landing gear. Zona Militar adds that the C-47 TA-05 landed earlier that morning and is now at the National Aeronautics Museum.

The strip had grown from 300 metres to 800 metres by the end of October and, by English Wikipedia’s account, to 1,200 by 40 metres by April 1970. On 11 April 1970 the Hercules TC-61, commanded by Commodore Arturo Athos Gandolfi, became the first C-130 to land there. On 28 July 1973 the presidential Fokker F28 T-01 Patagonia landed, the first jet to touch down in Antarctica according to the same account. Antarctica, the Wikipedia article says, was no longer an isolated place.

Since then Marambio has been Argentina’s air gateway to Antarctica. The Air Force’s C-130Hs from the I Air Brigade at El Palomar fly the route via Ushuaia or Río Gallegos, and in November 2023 a Hercules, TC-66, carried a Bell 212 helicopter down to the base. Zona Militar lists C-130s, Twin Otters, Mi-171E, Bell 212 and Bell 412 helicopters among the aircraft that operate from it.

The Twin Otter, in service since November 1968, is the small aircraft of the Antarctic flight. It has had a hard decade: in August 2019 the T-82 was badly damaged in an accident on Ross Island, as Zona Militar names it, about 54 kilometres from the base, and in February 2021 the T-87 damaged its landing gear on the Larsen C ice shelf. A Twin Otter, T-85, landed at Marambio again on 17 April 2026. A newer arrival is the Saab 340 of the IX Air Brigade at Comodoro Rivadavia, which first landed in March 2024 and made three crossings in the 2026 season on a runway the Air Force describes as just over 1,200 metres long and 40 metres wide, on frozen ground.

Marambio is a joint Antarctic station, and the airfield is what keeps it supplied. Zona Militar puts its population at about 70 in winter and 170 in summer; English Wikipedia gives 165 in summer, citing the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs. Its scientific work includes glaciology, wildlife counts, meteorology, a cosmic-ray laboratory installed in 2019, palaeontology, seismic monitoring and ozone soundings.

Its isolation also makes it a test site. In 2011, according to Reuters as cited by English Wikipedia, NASA scientists came to Marambio to test a prototype suit for future Mars exploration. The Antarctic Treaty, which Argentina signed, sets aside territorial claims in Antarctica; Argentina regards the base as part of its Antarctic sector, a claim the treaty neither recognises nor rejects.