Scientists of St. Petersburg Mining University, who are now on the White Continent, wished their compatriots health, happiness and good luck in the new year.
On Thursday, December 30, members of the Russian Antarctic Expedition contacted the editorial office of Forpost to convey their congratulations to the students, graduate students and staff of the Mining University on the holiday. In addition, they wished all St. Petersburg citizens and Russians the fulfillment of their most cherished desires, as well as success in work and study.
The peculiarity of this season is that, by all appearances, polar explorers will have to celebrate New Year separately. This is due to the fact that one group of specialists from the glacial-drilling team has already reached the Vostok research station and reactivated it. But the second one is still on the coast, since flights deep into the continent are constantly postponed due to bad weather.
“We are sitting in our suitcases waiting for the flight. And, most interestingly, the plane can only take off early in the morning, because during the day the runway is "thawed out" and there are no adequate conditions to take to the sky. And at night, it gets frosty. That is why we get up at 4 o'clock every morning, even though flights are constantly canceled because of cyclones. One day we have bad weather, the next they have bad weather in the East, the next, bad weather is forecasted for tomorrow. The plane doesn't go high, it flies at a low altitude. Once we were already in our way, but the weather changed unexpectedly in the East, so we had to go back and stay again at the Progress station. Of course, we're already very eager to join our colleagues and get to work. But we can’t do so yet,” said Vyacheslav Kadochnikov, lead engineer at Mining University.
He noted that none of the expedition participants was sick. However, not everyone has managed to acclimatize to the endless daylight hours. The human body has difficulty adapting to the fact that the sun in Antarctica constantly moves in a circle and does not go below the horizon. As a consequence, many polar explorers suffer from insomnia.
Scientists of St. Petersburg University, who have already arrived in the East, say that “acclimatization passed them by”, but only because “there is no time for that”.
“On the first day, we dug up the entrance, made steps out of the ice, settled into rooms. Yesterday we worked from 8 am to 2 am. Of course, the more tired we were, the more we felt the hypoxia (low oxygen content in the body, which is typical for the area of Vostok station, located 3.5 km above sea level - ed.). We have done small repair and preparatory work at the drilling site. Now we're collecting the borehole manometer-thermometer for geophysical studies, and today we will make the first trip", said Danil Serbin, lead engineer of Mining University.
The polar explorers wished all the best to Russians in the new year. To congratulate on the upcoming year 2022, they handed over to the faculty, all staff, graduate students and students of St. Petersburg Mining University; a poem:
We wish you on New Year’s Eve
Clear as ice joy.
May this New Year bring you
Happiness and joy,
And successes in your job,
And all that you’ve been waiting for!
We send you greetings from the Antarctic,
May the sun always shine on you!
It's important to remember that, as of now, seven scientists from St. Petersburg Mining University are working on the Sixth Continent; and they will be there for this entire season. These are the head of the research party Alexey Bolshunov, its scientific advisor Sergey Ignatiev, the associate professor of the Department of Well-Drilling Andrey Dmitriev, the leading engineers Vyacheslav Kadochnikov and Danil Serbin, and the postgraduate students Dmitry Vasiliev and Vyacheslav Shadrin.
