MURMANSK, August 11. /TASS/. Testing of the world's first reusable stratospheric platform for the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route research was successful, press service of the Murmansk Arctic University (MAU) told TASS. The university supervises the project. The experiment took place near the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, to where Russian scientists and school students from 23 countries had traveled onboard the 50 Let Pobedy (50 Years of Victory) nuclear-powered icebreaker as part of Rosatom's Icebreaker of Knowledge expedition.
"It is for the first time ever that Russian scientists have successfully launched a reusable stratospheric platform in the Arctic - the first development of the kind, designed to monitor the situation along the Northern Sea Route, to conduct environmental monitoring, and to provide communications in the Arctic," the university's press service said.
The experiment confirmed the feasibility of establishing stable radio communications using readily available radio equipment in the Earth's polar areas, where signal reception from ground-based radio stations and satellites is extremely difficult or impossible. Results of the platform's launch will be used for improving communications quality along the Northern Sea Route and will also advance the creation of an independent Arctic monitoring system that does not depend on data from foreign satellites, that is more cost-effective, and that can provide high-quality data transmission in real time.
