Funding for the fifth Antarctic season of the Odesa icebreaker was provided without the state budget

The flagship of the Ukrainian scientific fleet, the icebreaker Noosphere, which was relocated from Odesa to Cape Town on the eve of Russia's invasion, has started its fifth Arctic season.

According to the press service of the National Antarctic Science Center (NASC), the ship is led by Ukrainian captain Andriy Starish.

This season, the Noosphere plans to conduct more research than in previous voyages:

• Oceanographers will study changes in currents and mysterious "hot waves" in the depths of the cold Southern Ocean;
• geologists will look for heat flows from the Earth's core through the ocean floor and turn the Noosphere into a time machine, recreating the paleoclimate from the bottom sediments;
• biologists will study the marine life of the Southern Ocean: phytoplankton, benthic animals and their response to climate change, and will keep track of whales using artificial intelligence;
• meteorologists will again study "atmospheric rivers" using radiosondes;
• geophysicists will also conduct radio soundings, but of the ionosphere.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, such a long Antarctic season of the ship was made possible by international contracts, not by the state budget. All joint research is also funded by foreign partners.

In particular, cooperation with the Antarctic programs of other countries is expanding: for the first time, the icebreaker will provide a rotation of polar explorers and deliver cargo to the British Antarctic station Rosera (it is 300 kilometers south of Vernadsky, above the Arctic Circle). Joint oceanographic and biological research is also planned as part of the First Mexican Antarctic Expedition, which is being organized in cooperation with Ukraine. Joint oceanographic studies of the mechanisms of warming of the Southern Ocean with Colombian scientists are starting.

In addition, earlier collaborations with Poland, the United States, and the Czech Republic will continue. Traditionally, Noosphere will also deliver a seasonal expedition of technicians and scientists to Vernadsky, and subsequently provide a rotation of annual expeditions.

Кирило Бойко