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NPEO 2002 Deployment Complete
Despite some complex logistical problems and conditions unusually difficult even by high Arctic standards, most of the scientific objectives for the North Pole Environmental Observatory's April 2002 deployment were attained. Fourteen NPEO researchers and engineers worked in the North Pole region for approximately the last two weeks of April. Progress reports via Iridium telephone provided frequent snapshots of the effort involved.
In a departure from the first two years when the deployment staged through the Canadian Forces base at Alert, the 2002 plan took advantage of the privately-operated Russian ice station established each spring since 1994 in the North Pole region to support a variety of tourist and commercial enterprises. This camp, dubbed "Borneo", maintains a 1200 meter runway for approximately the month of April near 89°N and 90°E. While tourists cross-country ski and ride hot-air balloons to the pole from Borneo, observatory researchers used the station as the starting point for their various projects.
Light aircraft
support in the North Pole area was provided by a
Great Slave Helicopters AStar
350 and a ski-equipped DeHavilland
DHC-6 Twin Otter of First
Air, Ltd.. The helicopter was staged to the Pole from Eureka
with an escort from the Twin Otter. Most of the NPEO 2002 team and cargo
flew from Resolute via CFS Alert to Borneo aboard
a First
Air Hawker Siddley 748 twin turboprop. Other support, such as
landing privileges, aviation fuel, food service, and accommodations
were contracted through Polarcircle
Expeditions , the French company that is the primary service
provider at Borneo. Contractual arrangements were made through the National
Science Foundation's logistics coordinator Veco
Polar Resources.
The NPEO 2002 operation included recovery
and redeployment of the mooring anchored to the ocean floor.
The helicopter was essential to reach the precise coordinates of the
mooring, and divers were necessary to recover the instruments from beneath
the ice.
Examples of nonscientific activities going o n at Borneo include the following links: