In 2009, the Marine Live-ice Automobile Expedition (MLAE) successfully
traversed the Arctic waters and ice between
Ostrov Sredniy island of the
Severnaya Zemlya archipelago and the
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Mag ...
. The route took 38 days between 20 March and 26 April 2009.
The expedition was headed by Russian explorer
Vasily Yelagin Vasily Igorevich Yelagin (russian: Василий Игоревич Елагин; born 22 February 1953) is Russian mountaineer and explorer, head of the MLAE-2008, MLAE-2009, MLAE-2011, MLAE-2013, MLAE-2014, and MLAE-2015 expeditions.
For his ...
, accompanied by six others: Afanasy Makovnev, Vladimir Obihod, Sergey Larin, Alexey Shkrabkin, Alexey Ushakov, and Nikolai Nikulshin.
Vasily Elagin also engineered and built the two Yemelya
"Yemelya" vehicles, specs and design
/ref> 6x6 vehicles, Yemelya 1 and Yemelya 2, which had Diesel engine
The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...
s, low-pressure tires, and cargo trailers.
The expedition was carried out under the patronage of the Russian President’s Special Representative for International Cooperation in The Arctic Artur Chilingarov. The support and safety monitoring of the expedition and the crew was provided by the aviation department of the Federal Security Service
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) RF; rus, Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (ФСБ России), Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Feder ...
.
The Russian Book of Records recorded MLAE 2009 as the first expedition to reach the Geographic North Pole in wheeled land vehicles.
A subsequent expedition, MLAE-2011
MLAE-2011 was a two vehicle expedition with a crew of seven following a route from Dudinka (Russia) via the North Pole to Resolute Bay (Canada).
The expedition was organized by the Russian Center For Arctic Exploration and carried out under the p ...
, followed two years later.
References
{{Reflist
External links
YouTube: Motor Rally to the North Pole
Russian Arctic expeditions
2009 in science
2009 in Russia
21st century in the Arctic
North Pole