MOSCOW, February 26. /TASS/. Fyodor Konyukhov, a famous Russian traveler, plans to fly 900 kilometers to the North Pole on a two-seater paraglider and to land there. The due time is early July, 2024, pilot Igor Potapkin, who will fly with Konyukhov, said at the TASS press center.

"We want to set a record of distance by flying about 900 kilometers and making a landing. Prior to us, no one has made such landings on a paraglider - an ultralight aircraft. We need to reach the pole, we need to find the destination point using navigation devices. We plan the flight time will be 12-13 hours at an average speed of 60 km per hour at the altitude of about one kilometer. After landing, we will need to be waiting for the nuclear-powered ship, staying there for some time, where our shelter would be the aircraft's wing. It's not easy, but I think we will win," the pilot said.

The adventure will start from the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, to where the travelers will get on the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear-powered icebreaker. The takeoff and landing will be in conditions of drifting Arctic ice. The paraglider is a two-seater trolley weighing 150 kg without a fairing with a four-stroke engine, a variable pitch propeller and a wing area of 42 sq. m. The St. Petersburg Polytechnic University has developed the fairing that ensures the crew's safety, as well as additional storage areas for rescue equipment and other payload. Two fuel tanks of 75 liters each, made of composite materials, are built into the fairing.

After the landing on the North Pole, Konyukhov will arrange a drifting polar station in the Arctic Ocean, where he will stay for three weeks, continuing a scientific program of the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The program includes studies of the Arctic Ocean floor's seismic activities, and its ice cover's drift routes.

"I have been working on the topic of microplastics in the ocean. I will drill holes, take samples, pump water through filters, then I will stack filters to give them to the Institute of Oceanology. They will check whether there are microplastics in the current that goes through the North Pole," Konyukhov added.

In 2022, the Konyukhov-Potapkin crew made a training flight to the North Pole. Their paraglider took off a drifting ice floe along the side of the 50 Let Pobedy icebreaker at 85 degrees north latitude. From there, the pilots headed for the North Pole. It was the first ever motorcycle paragliding flight in the high Arctic latitudes. After three hours and 172 km of the flight, the pilots landed on an ice floe. The icebreaker, sailing towards the North Pole, picked up the crew and continued its cruise tourist program.

About traveler

Fedor Konyukhov is the first person in the world to reach the planet's five poles: the Northern Geographical (three times), the Southern Geographical, the Pole of Inaccessibility in the Arctic Ocean, the top of Mount Everest (Alpinists pole), Cape Horn (Yachtsmen pole). He was the first Russian to reach in sole voyages the North and South Poles on skis, the first to circumnavigate the world, the first to complete the Seven Peaks program, the first to cross the ocean on a rowing boat and to circumnavigate the globe on a hot air balloon.