Soviet Antarctic Expedition
The Soviet Antarctic Expedition (SAE or SovAE) (, ''Sovetskaya antarkticheskaya ekspeditsiya'') was part of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of the Soviet Committee on Antarctic Research of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. It was ...
(1957–59) was led by Yevgeny Tolstikov on the continent and included Czech future astronomer
Antonín Mrkos
Antonín Mrkos () (27 January 1918 – 29 May 1996) was a Czech astronomer.
Biography
Mrkos entered the University in Brno in 1938. His studies were interrupted by the onset of World War II, and in 1945 he became a staff member at the Skalna ...
; the marine expedition on the ''Ob'' was led by I V Maksimov.
Two diesel-electric ships were used to transport the expedition. RV ''Ob'' (flagship; captain ) and ''Kooperatsiya'' (captain A S Yantselevich), used mainly as a transport vessel. The ships arrived in
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...
in November – December 1957. Together with the ships' crews the expedition consisted of 445 men, of whom 183 were scheduled for wintering.
The tasks of the expedition were:
# Relief of the 1956–1958 continental expedition and continuation of the IGY programme
# Organisation of the Sovetskaya station at the pole of relative inaccessibility
# Continuation of tractor-sledge traverses in central Antarctica
# Oceanographic work on the ''Ob'' in the southern oceans, and cartography of the coast from Mirny to the Bellingshausen sea
The programme included 6 stations: ( Mirny;
Vostok
Vostok () refers to east in Russian but may also refer to:
Spaceflight
* Vostok programme, Soviet human spaceflight project
* Vostok (spacecraft), a type of spacecraft built by the Soviet Union
* Vostok (rocket family), family of rockets derived ...
Oasis
In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environmentKomsomol'skaya).
The first tractor-train to the interior left on 26 December, with 32 men. On 2 January 1958 the train arrived at Pionerskaya, and left again on the 8th. On the 17th they reached Komsomol'skaya; conditions of travel were difficult. A portion of the train (7 tractors and sledges) left on the 20th to relieve Vostok, arriving on the 27th, and delivering over 100 tons of cargo. On the 28th the train left for Komsomol'skaya, arriving on the 31st. On 3 February the train, with 27 men, left to found Sovetskaya; they reached 78° 24′ S, 87° 35′ E on the 10th, at an altitude of 3570 m. The station was rapidly constructed, and the train left on the 18th, returning to Mirny on 4 March, having completed a round trip of .
After spending the Antarctic winter at Mirny, the Expedition undertook a second set of tractor traverses starting in September 1958. One team reached the pole of inaccessibility and established The
Pole of Inaccessibility
In geography, a pole of inaccessibility is the farthest (or most difficult to reach) location in a given landmass, sea, or other topographical feature, starting from a given boundary, relative to a given criterion. A geographical criterion of i ...
Estonia
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
n writer Juhan Smuul took part of the expedition as a Soviet journalist and described the interesting details in his 1960 boo "Antarctica Ahoy!: The Ice Book ("Jäine raamat" in Estonian).
References
* (translated from the Russian by the Israel program for scientific translations, Jerusalem, 1966 for the
National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...