The First Soviet Antarctic Expedition was led by
Mikhail Somov
Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov (russian: Михаил Михайлович Сомов; , in Moscow – 30 December 1973, in Leningrad) was a Soviet oceanologist, polar explorer, Doctor of Geographical Sciences (1954).
Somov graduated from the Mosc ...
; his scientific deputy was . The expedition lasted from 30 November 1955 to 1957 and involved 127 expedition members and 75 crew members.
Three
diesel-electric ships were used to transport the expedition. They were ''RV Ob'' (flagship; captain ), ''RV Lena'' (captain A. I. Vetrov) and the refrigerator ship No. 7 (captain M. A. Tsygankov). The final ship was used only for transporting perishables. ''Ob'' and ''Lena'' were icebreakers 130m long and displacing 12,600 tons.
On 30 November 1955 ''Ob'' left port at
Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad ( ; rus, Калининград, p=kəlʲɪnʲɪnˈɡrat, links=y), until 1946 known as Königsberg (; rus, Кёнигсберг, Kyonigsberg, ˈkʲɵnʲɪɡzbɛrk; rus, Короле́вец, Korolevets), is the largest city and ...
.
The principal task of the expedition was to organise the main base,
Mirny, and perform limited scientific observations. Other tasks were reconnaissance of sites for the inland bases
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 from ...
and
Sovetskaya; and oceanography of the
Indian ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...
.
References
* A V Nudel Man ''Soviet Antarctic Expeditions 1955-1959'', Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, Moskva, 1959 (translated from the Russian; Israel program for scientific translations, Jerusalem, 1966).
Further reading
* Gan, I. (2009) "The reluctant hosts: Soviet Antarctic expedition ships visit Australia and New Zealand in 1956", ''
Polar Record
''Polar Record'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of Arctic and Antarctic exploration and research. It is managed by the Scott Polar Research Institute and published by Cambridge University Press. The journal w ...
'', 45, (232) pp. 37–50. ISSN 0032-2474
*Gan, I. (2009) "The Soviet Preparation for the IGY Antarctic Program and the Australian Response: Politics and Science, Bolet%#237;n Antártico Chileno 2nd SCAR Workshop on the History of Antarctic Research, 22-22 September 2006, Santiago, Chile, pp. 60-70.
on Refereed Conference Paper
External links
History of organization of the first Soviet/Russian Antarctic expedition 1955–57 and its international importance in the Antarctic studiesby N. Kornilov (ZAO «INTAARI», St. Petersburg, Russia)]
Soviet Antarctic expeditions, 01
Antarctic Expedition 01
Antarctic Expedition 01
Antarctic Expedition 01
1955 in Antarctica
1956 in Antarctica
1957 in Antarctica
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