This weekend Lorient will be the starting point of an unprecedented scientific exploration mission. Sunday July 19, from the discovery pontoon, locals and tourists will be able to watch the departure of the polar station Tara which will soon sail into the heart of the Arctic Ocean. Numerous activities are planned throughout the weekend, before the scientific ship sets sail.
This gray and orange floating laboratory, resembling a space saucer, should reach the ice floe next September, after a month of navigation and two stopovers in Norway. The scientists on board will then study for more than a year one of the most extreme and little-known environments on our planet: the Arctic sea ice. An adventure that will take place in extraordinary conditions.
110 tonnes d’aluminium
The Tara Polar Station was built in Cherbourg (Manche) within Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie (CMN). It is a floating scientific base 26 meters long and 16 meters wide. It is made up of an igloo-shaped dome placed on a large buoy: 110 tonnes of aluminum and 27 km of cables were necessary for its manufacture.
The station is designed to be intentionally caught in the ice floe and then drift with it for many months. It must therefore be able to withstand polar temperatures of up to -52°C. Its oval and very rounded hull allows the station to be lifted by the ice when it exerts strong pressure, rather than being crushed.
This principle is inspired by the famous ship Fram of the explorer Fridtjof Nansen at the end of the 19th century. Having understood that a current naturally crossed the Arctic Ocean, he was the first to have the idea of letting a ship drift with the ice floe, instead of fighting against it. Previously, all those who had tried to force passage through the North Pole had seen their boats crushed by the ice.
18 months of mission following the transpolar current
This first mission, called Tara Polaris I, is planned for a duration of 18 months. The drift on the ice shelf under the effect of the transpolar current (Transpolar Drift) is expected to last between 350 to 500 days, at an average speed of 10 km per day.
The Tara station will thus be gradually drawn from the Siberian side of the Arctic Ocean towards the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard. It is precisely this trend that Fridtjof Nansen (1893–1896) followed.
The duration of this mission is unprecedented. The previous one, also initiated by the Tara Océan Foundation, lasted sixteen months. “It’s going to be a unique adventure in the world,” explains Romain Troublé, general director of the Foundation, while no one spends “more than two months a year in the center of the Arctic.”
12 to 18 people on board
The ship will carry twelve people in winter and eighteen in summer. Six scientists will be part of the expedition as well as sailors and doctors. The volunteers will have to face the long months of polar night, confinement, extreme cold with temperatures of -25°C on average.
They will possibly be accompanied by two dogs to warn of the presence of polar bears. Because once the Tara station is immobilized in the ice floe, the scientists will not stay on board all the time: they will set up a base camp on the ice. Rather, it will be a set of tents, platforms and scientific instruments placed directly on the ice floe, to be able to carry out surveys.
Ten expeditions planned until 2045
This expedition is only the first in a long series. In all, ten missions of the same type are planned with the polar station Tara between 2026 and 2045. “It’s the ISS of ice,” summarized Serge Quantara, CEO of the Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie (CMN) shipyards, which built the ship. An ISS regular, Thomas Pesquet, designated godfather of this brand new polar station, praised an “incredible and a little crazy project”.
In total, 30 research centers from 12 countries are associated with this project which will focus on fundamental research in biology and the study of global climate change. The researchers on board will work for this entire consortium, and not for their research laboratory alone.
This will involve measuring changes in the thickness of the ice pack, its properties and its temperature. Numerous sensors will be on board to study the snow, the wind, the humidity, the radiation on the ice or even the salinity of the water, the currents under the ice floes and the plankton and the micro-organisms that live there… The scientists will also look at the exchanges between the ocean, the ice and the atmosphere.
A mission with its geopolitical constraints
The polar station Tara will drift from northern Russia. However, in the Russian zone, scientists will refrain from carrying out acoustic surveys using sonars. “Defense-wise, it’s too complicated. We cannot listen to what is happening, otherwise we cannot pass,” declared Romain Troublé upon returning from a testing campaign in the Far North.
This is one of the only tacit limits of the mission of the Tara station which will indeed pass through an area close to the Kola Peninsula, where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based, which notably includes nuclear submarines.
