ST. PETERSBURG, February 15. /TASS/. The North Pole self-propelled ice-resistant platform will leave for the first Arctic expedition in autumn. Russian scientists have been working on the upcoming studies’ program, Academician Andrey Zabrodsky said on Monday.
"The first expedition is planned for this autumn," he said. "Under the agreement between the Academy [of Sciences] with Roshydromet (Russian meteorology service), we will be working now on the expedition’s program."
For scientific purposes, the platform will be frozen into drifting ice, inside of which the platform will be moving in the Arctic Ocean. The North Pole’s displacement is more than 10,000 tonnes, in terms of the food stock, the platform may work independently for one year, in terms of fuel - two years.
The ice-resistant platform will accommodate onboard 15 scientific laboratories and will have a mobile field camp, which will be located on ice. The North Pole’s scientific team will feature 34 experts.
According to Minister of Natural Resources Alexander Kozlov, the North Pole will be floated in July. The meteorology service and the Admiralty Shipyard signed an agreement on the platform’s building in spring, 2018. On April 10, 2019, the platform was laid. By using the platform, Russia will resume the practice of the North Pole year-long drifting expeditions, which was terminated due to the climate changes in the early 2000s. In September 2021, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced the government would allocate additionally more than 2.1 billion rubles ($27 million) to finish the platform’s construction.