According to the director of the AARI Alexander Makarov, at the moment scientists are developing their own scientific program, which will involve the platform.

The Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI, St. Petersburg) will launch the first voyage of the North Pole ice-resistant self-propelled platform (ISPP) in 2022. On Thursday the director of the AARI, Alexander Makarov, told TASS about this on the sidelines of the international conference "The Arctic as an object of state policy" in St. Petersburg.

The general director of the Admiralty Shipyards, on which the platform is being built, Alexander Buzakov, announced earlier that the delivery and acceptance certificate is planned to be signed on July 1, 2022. “I was at the shipyards today, work on the platform is underway. If on July 1 everything goes well with us, then in 2022 there will be the first voyage,” he said.

Makarov noted that at the moment the AARI scientists are developing their own scientific program, which will involve the platform. It is planned to prepare it by the end of this year, after which it will be discussed with foreign scientists interested in research on the platform.

Earlier it was reported that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed an order on the allocation of more than 2.1 billion rubles to Roshydrometeorological Center to complete the construction of the North Pole platform. Funding will help complete construction in 2022 and perform mooring and contractor sea trials.

As the AARI press service specified, the platform will be able to arrive at the work site, drift in the Arctic Ocean for up to two years and return back to the port without involving icebreakers.

The platform is 83 m long, about 22 m wide and over 11 m high. One of the decks will be equipped with a landing area for Mi-8 and Mi-38 helicopters. The ice-resistant platform will have 15 scientific laboratories on its board, which cover the whole complex of studying the natural environment of the Arctic: ionospheric observations, geological, chemical and environmental studies, studies of ice loads and ice breakdown mechanics, studies of acoustic tomography of the Arctic basin, studies of the boundary layer and free atmosphere, magnetic and gravity research and a lot more.

Source: TASS