Oui ça vaut le coup d'être lu en anglais. Pas tellement pour Glonass mais pour des nouvelles des stations polaires russes qui ont été fermées à une période et dont certaines vont réouvrir dont celle citée "Bellingshausen".
Meanwhile, the Academician Fyodorov research vessel has completed its mission by the Russkaya base and headed for the station.
“Strong winds had ruined almost the entire infrastructure at Russkaya. A large team of polar explorers landed from the Academician Fyodorov for repairing the base sites and for giving maintenance to automatic gadgets,” the source said.
The crew replaced storage batteries and automatic monitoring continued, he said.
The arrival in Bellingshausen is due on February 5, the source said.
Bellingshausen is the first Russian research station in Antarctica, which opened on February 22, 1968. The station is located in the Antarctic area with the most favorable weather conditions. An average temperature of the coldest month (August) is minus 6.8 degrees Centigrade, and an average temperature of the warmest month (February) is 1.1 degrees above zero Centigrade. Russian polar explorers often call Bellingshausen a resort.
The station situated on the sub-Antarctic King George Island is housing representatives of the Geography Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the St. Petersburg University. The team is doing seasonal research on glaciology and microbiology. The information will help evaluate the role and the impact of climate change on the cryo-sphere and biosphere of the Antarctic region.
The Academician Fyodorov started the Antarctic voyage on November 1, 2009.
“In all, the voyage will last for 200 days,” head of the Russian Antarctic expedition – Deputy Director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of the Federal Hydro-Meteorological Service Valery Lukin said. “The vessel will go round Antarctica and visit Russian research stations along the coastline.”
The 55th expedition will study the role of Antarctica in the global climate change and make geological and geophysical research and sea studies, he said.
“The expedition team will fulfill 20 monitoring programs at Russia’s five round-the-year research stations in Antarctica – Novolazarevskaya, Mirny, Vostok, Progress and Bellingshausen,” he said.
There are about 45 round-the-year research stations in Antarctica. Russia has five active stations and one field base: Mirny, Vostok, Novolazarevskaya, Progress, Bellingshausen and Druzhnaya 4. Three stations – Molodyozhnaya, Russkaya and Leningradskaya – are mothballed. All other former Soviet stations have been closed down permanently.
The Molodyozhnaya coastal station opened in 1963 as a regional hydro-meteorological center of the former Soviet Union in Antarctica. It housed a large radio center, which was the main sender and receiver of radio information for Soviet explorers in Antarctica. Besides, the station had an atmospheric monitoring center and a set of research facilities. It became a seasonal base in the late 1990s.
The Russkaya station, which closed down in the end of the 20th century for the lack of funds, received automatic weather and geophysical gadgets this winter. The 3,000-kilometer area of the Antarctic coast from the Ross Sea to western areas was a blank spot for long. The Russkaya station that opened in 1980 somewhat filled in that gap.
Another mothballed station is Leningradskaya. It is located on the Oates Land in Eastern Antarctica, adjacent to the Somov Sea. That sea is covered with drifting ice all the year round. Leningradskaya was opened in 1971 in the Antarctic sea climate characterized with swift changes of weather, which made it valuable from the scientific point of view.
The Progress station is being modernized as an outpost of Russian polar explorers on the sixth continent.
The Vostok station is the only one of the five permanently opened Antarctic stations of Russia, which is located away from the sea, on an ice plateau of 3,488 kilometers above the sea level. A sub-glacial lake, Vostok, is located near the station. Lake Vostok covers an area of 15,690 square kilometers. It has an estimated volume of 5,400 cubic kilometers and consists of fresh water. The average depth is 344 meters. In May 2005 an island was found in the center of the lake. The fresh water pond is 450,000 years old. The world scientific community regards the lake as a major geographic discovery of the previous century.
The Mirny station located on the Antarctic coast of the Davis Sea in the Australian Antarctic Territory. The station was opened on February 13, 1956 by the first Soviet Antarctic Expedition. It is used as main base for the Vostok Station located 1,400 kilometers from the coast. In summer, it hosts up to 169 people in 30 buildings, in winter about 60 scientists and technicians. The average temperature at the location is –11°C, and on more than 200 days per year the wind is stronger than 15 m/s, with occasional cyclones. Main areas of research are glaciology, seismology, meteorology, observation of polar lights, cosmic radiation, and marine biology.
The Novolazarevskaya station is located at Schirmacher Oasis, Queen Maud Land, 75 kilometers from the Antarctic coast. It was opened on January 18, 1961 by the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition. The maximum summer population is 70. Novolazarevskaya has an airstrip that serves both research-related and commercial flights.
In the words of Lukin, prospective hydrocarbon reserves of the Antarctic shelf are estimated at 35 billion to 51 billion tonnes of equivalent fuel.
“Antarctic waters had drawn attention of mankind with their vast biological resources. Hunters and whale fishers came to Antarctica before scientists,” he noted. “That happened in the end of the 18th – early 19th centuries. Many countries with fishing fleets focused their attention on the Antarctic waters in the late 1960s. International laws prohibited to fish whales and seals in Antarctica and limited the fishing of bio-resources.”
Geologists have been taking active part in all national Antarctic expeditions since the very beginning of the 20th century, Lukin said. At first, they were interested in the geological structure of the continent. Then large reserves of coal, iron ore, base metals, precious metals and rare earth metals were found. “Russian geologists contributed a lot to that work. They developed efficient techniques of aero-geophysical research of mineral resources discovered on and under the ice,” he said.
“The Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty that entered into force in 1997 prohibits any other than scientific interest in mineral resources,” he said, adding that the protocol would be valid for 50 years.
The Academician Fyodorov vessel will come back to St. Petersburg in May 2010.