MOSCOW, July 8. /TASS/. Fyodor Konyukhov and co-pilot Igor Potapkin have flown their paramotor, a motorized paraglider, from an ice float located at 86 degrees north latitude in the Arctic Ocean to the North Pole, becoming the first in history to make such a trip, according to a post on the Telegram channel of the Russian traveler, writer and artist.
"At 2:36 a.m. Moscow time [on Monday] (11:36 p.m. GMT on Sunday - TASS), the Konyukhov-Potapkin crew began to descend. They landed near the [North] Pole at 2:42 a.m. Moscow time. Flight time 10 hours and 13 minutes," the post reads.
Konyukhov and Potapkin became the world’s first people to make it to the North Pole on a paramotor.
The two adventurers were taken to the ice float off Franz Josef Archipelago by the atomic icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy (50 Years of Victory). According to plan, Konyukhov and Potapkin will camp on the northern end of Earth’s axis waiting for the icebreaker to pick them up. Meanwhile, they will conduct some research on a mission from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specifically recording seismic activity beneath the Arctic Ocean, the intensity of ice melt and drift as well as the scope of plastic pollution in the ocean.
The two pilots performed a training flight to the North Pole on a paramotor in 2022 when they covered 172 km in three hours. Back then, they conducted the world’s first ever paramotor flight in high latitudes in the Arctic. Following the expedition, major tweaks were made to the paramotor project.