Russians in the Antarctic

Abstract

During 1966 the Eleventh Antarctic Expedition carried out an extensive complex of scientific research as part of the program of the International Years of the Quiet Sun. The Expedition worked in Mirny and at the scientific stations of Vostok, Molodezhnaya and Novolazarevskaya. Observations were also conducted at the two poles of Antarctica - the southern magnetic pole and the "cold pole". At the Vostok station, meteorologists explored the climate, the state of the ionosphere, northern lights, cosmic rays, the geomagnetic field and the source of radio waves. Deep in the mainland south of the Davis Sea coast, research was conducted to ascertain the thickness of the ice sheet by the radio location method. One of the main tasks of the Expedition was to inform Soviet whaling flotillas of the weather in southern latitudes. Geological and geographical research was carried out in the mountains of Enderby Land, and glaciological and hydrographic research was undertaken in Alaskeyev Bay. The program of the Expedition included medical observations of man's acclimatization to conditions in Antarctica. Oceanographic research was carried out from aboard the Ob in the waters of Antarctica between Pravda Coast and Queen Maud Land. The results of the research and discoveries made by the Twelfth Soviet Antarctic Expedition were summed up at a recent session of the Learned Council of the Leningrad Research Institute of the Arctic and Antarctic, which is the Soviet Union's centre of polar exploration. The scientists pointed out that during the expedition of a tractor-sleigh train to the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility a new method was used for the first time for the measuring by radar of the thickness of the ice cap of Antarctica. ... Soviet glaciologists have covered 260 km. in the area of Mirny observatory, and have measured the thickness of the glacier, from a plane, on a route 1,500 km. long. It has been established as the result of investigations that the central part of the glacial cap within Eastern Antarctica is the world's biggest and almost ideal elevated plain. ... Geologists have made some other remarkable discoveries in the Antarctic. They investigated a large part of the coast of Eastern Antarctica (about 800 km.) and carried out a small-scale geological survey of Queen Maud Land and Enderby Land, and discovered there rich deposits of coal and iron ore. Also discovered were traces of manganese, titanium, molybdenum, lead, zinc, silver and tin. ... At the end of November, 1967, the Ob sailed from Leningrad for Antarctica with the members of the Thirteenth Expedition who will remain there for the whole of 1968.