Space station at sea for extreme Arctic winter expeditions

The Department of Maritime and Transportation Technology is participating in a feasibility study and design of an innovative drifting-ice vessel that can be used in extreme Arctic winter expeditions. Thanks to an NWO grant and supported by the Water Top Sector, the Maritime Department is working together with a research team on the design of the MARVEL (Modular Arctic Research Vessel) drifting-ice vessel. MARVEL’s most important research mode is ‘passive drift’, which drifts with the ice movements from the North Pole. This research vessel resembles a space station. The ship is self-sufficient and provides a small crew of five to six researcher and navigators (‘icenauts’) with accommodation cut off from the outside world for five months. The crew will undertake a research programme in which they will be supported 24-7 by a Ground Control Station. Maritime student Luigi Portunato graduated this week, under supervision of professor Hans Hopman, with the concept design of the ship for this operation.
Read Luigi Portunato’s graduation thesis ‘Drifting with the Whales.’ 

 

Ice Whale Foundation

The research project is being led by the Ice Whale Foundation. They are going to organise expeditions that will conduct research on the unique habitat of the bowhead whale. The expeditions will take place in an area which has never been studied during the Arctic winter before, namely among the drifting ice of the Fram Straight between Greenland and Spitsbergen. The winter conditions here are extreme: darkness, winter storms, drifting ice and temperatures far below the freezing point.

Read more here (article in Dutch): Arctic winter expeditions