Flagship of Russian polar fleet to conduct research at North Pole
Diesel-electric ship Akademik Fyodorov, the flagship of Russia's polar research fleet arrived in Murmansk Institute of Arctic and Antarctic Studies, Itar-Tass reports. Sunday, where from it heads for the North Pole, the ship’s captain Vladimir Kaloshin said in a radio report to the
While in the Baltic Sea, the crew took aboard deepwater descent capsules Mir belonging to the Institute of Oceanic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a group of researchers from the laboratory of deepwater capsules.
“Experts on oceanic studies, marine geology, geophysics and Arctic research have arrived in Murmansk from Moscow and St Petersburg,” Vladimir Sokolov, the director of the high-latitude expedition told Itar-Tass.
The St Petersburg-based airline Spark Plus has sent Mi-8 MTV helicopters to provide aerial assistance to the polar cruise.
Sokolov especially stressed the fact that standing at the head of the party is the president of the association of Russian Arctic researchers Artur Chilingarov, himself a much-acclaimed researcher of Artic and Antarctic areas.
The Akademik Fyodorov will take to the Pole a party of 85 people. Another group of 50 people will arrive there aboard the nuclear icebreaker Rossiya that will escort the Akademik Fyodorov through fields of never-melting floe ice.
The expedition’s program includes two descents of the capsules in the North Pole area at the end of July.
In the first half of August, the capsules will be transported to the research ship Mstislav Keldysh that will get to the area of Franz Josef Land archipelago by that time.
After that preparations are due to begin for launching another drifting polar exhibition on an ice-flow, Sokolov said.