Three Russians set a world record last week by parachuting from the Earth’s stratosphere to the North Pole in a mission that also served as a test for a new prototype communications system for use in the Arctic, the venture’s organizer said Friday. Nikita Caplin.
Mikhail Kornienko, Aleksandar Linik and Denis Yefremov they jumped out of an Ilyushin-76 aircraft at an altitude of 10,500 meters and free-falled for two and a half minutes before opening their parachutes 1,000 meters from the ground, all captured in a spectacular video.
All three paratroopers suffered frostbite on their cheeks, despite the heated masks. They jumped out of the plane and plunged at a speed of more than 300 kilometers per hour, with a temperature of about -50 degrees Celsius, with a feeling of -70 degrees Celsius, Tsaplin said.
The stratosphere is a layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that extends from 10 kilometers (about 8 km at the poles) to a height of about 55 km.
In its lower part, the air temperature does not change (about -56.5 °C above the poles and mid-latitudes, i.e. -85 °C above the equator), but due to the absorption of ultraviolet radiation from the Sun in the ozone layer, it increases slowly and then more rapidly with height. , and at its peak it reaches values of around –2 °C.
Mihail, Aleksandar and Denis landed near the Russian polar base Barneo, where they managed to power the server with the help of diesel generators and establish a connection with the satellite. The equipment had previously been ejected from the aircraft at a lower altitude.
Communications in the Arctic will become increasingly important as Russia, the US and China vie for resources, trade routes and military advantage.
Caplin said the Russians had managed to send data using an experimental system, but admitted they had nothing yet to compare to the US-based Iridium Communications Inc system, which offers satellite communications services covering both poles of the Earth.
“Our solution is a prototype for now, but we are still able to connect to the satellite from our server and transfer data. Of course, it is still not Iridium, but we have made small steps in that direction and that was our task, to see how much to realistically achieve a low-cost solution to access the satellite from a computer,” said Tsaplin.
Before the Iridium concept was developed, satellite phones were impractical, as they were as bulky as briefcases. The devices received signals from satellites located on the geostationary earth’s path. In doing so, the satellites moved at the same speed as the Earth, which enabled them to maintain a fixed position relative to it at an altitude of about 33,000 kilometers.
The company, or the Iridium system, named after the very rare chemical element iridium, works on different principles. The satellites are located in low Earth orbit at a height of about 781 kilometers, and they transfer data to smaller compact devices in thousandths of a second.
