Scientists are planning the arctic expedition on a new self-propelled platform

In 2022 scientists from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of Roshydromet are planning to begin the first research of the Arctic on a new self-propelled ice-resistant platform, which is being built in St. Petersburg. It was announced by the director of the institute Alexander Makarov in the press center of TASS.

The contract for construction of the ice-resistant self-propelled platform “North Pole” was signed between Roshydromet and the Admiralty Shipyards in spring of 2018. Construction of the platform will allow resuming the practice of sending of year-long drifting expeditions “North Pole”, which was interrupted because of climate changes in the early 2000-s.

“I hope that if everything goes according to the plan, we will be able to launch the first journey of this platform in 2022. The main goal of this platform in the coming years is to refine data for predictive models of the high-latitude Arctic”, Makarov said.

According to him, the length of the platform will be 83 meters, and 33 researchers can be accommodated on board together with 13 crew members. The platform will be able to drift in autonomic mode during about two years. It will allow conducting long-term experiments in the Arctic never done before.

“Our idea is to make the platform not a separate observation point in the Arctic, but to include it in the network of our observatories - on Spitsbergen, Severnaya Zemlya and in the area of the Lena River delta. Thus, we are covering most of the Russian Arctic coast, and we will have one more observation point in the ocean. They will not be four different points, it will be a distributed observatory that will work on one and the same program, and experiments can be implemented in all four points simultaneously”, Makarov said.

At the press conference Yuriy Ugryumov, the head of the Russian scientific arctic expedition on the archipelago Spitsbergen, explained that equipment of the station would allow analyzing collected samples directly in the Arctic with transmitting of information to the continent in real time.

“Monitoring of environmental pollution will include water, snow and other environments. We will analyze these samples directly on the platform, what we could not do before on a classic drifting station. In fact, scientific research will go beyond the institute, it will take place in parallel on the platform and in St. Petersburg”, said Ugryumov.