The Soviet Union made a great contribution to exploring different regions, some of them were absolutely deserted, others were very dangerous or their maintenance in a normal state was a crucial thing and some of them were totally out-of-reach. And North Pole is not an exception. For the first time ever, the idea of floating on the huge ice-box, which spit off from the main arctic ice body, and exploring different nature phenomena along with making calculations of what had to be the default nature conditions was put forward by Norwegian arctic research worker Fridtjof Nansen (the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922) and then taken up by many Russian scientists.

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Every Soviet and now Russian drifting station is named “North Pole.” They differentiate between each other only because of the numbers given. Yearly every NP station carries out a line of complex explorations and there is an average number of such investigations:
600-650 of plumbing investigations, 3500-3900 meteorological observations, 600-650 pilot balloons releases which carrying radio sounders and 1200-1300 temperature measurements and sea water sampling for chemical analysis.

Modern drifting station looks like a small settlement with lots of houses and tents built for polar explorers and for the storage of their outfit. Usually the new station starts working in April, nearby North Pole, and then finishes its toil near Greenlandic strait. Nobody knows how much time it will going to take since no one can forecast the speed of wind which affects the speed of glacier itself. Average numbers of men working at the single station is 15, but over the history of all the stations more than 800 people managed to visit them.

First one was opened long long ago, in 1937 and it was named NP-1. The last one, NP-36, was opened back in 2008 and works so far. Today we will show you a thumping good collection of photos which you will surely enjoy.

Photo credits – 1