Last week, three Russians set a world record for parachuting from the Earth’s stratosphere to the North Pole. The mission also served as a test of a new prototype communications system for use in the Arctic. Mikhail Korniyenko, Alexander Lynnik, and Denis Yefremov jumped from an Ilyushin-76 plane at a height of 10,500 meters and spent about two and a half minutes in freefall before opening their chutes 1,000 meters above the ground. The descent was captured in a spectacular video.
All three suffered frostbite to their cheeks despite wearing heated masks. Plunging at a speed of more than 300 km/h, the air temperature of around -50 Celsius felt like -70C. They landed near Russia’s Barneo polar base, where they were able to power up a server using diesel generators and establish a connection to a satellite using equipment dropped from a lower altitude.
Communications in the Arctic are becoming increasingly important as nations like Russia, the United States, and China compete for resources, trade routes, and military advantage in the region. The Russians were able to send data via an experimental system, although it is not as advanced as systems like U.S.-based Iridium Communications Inc. Managing partner and co-founder of Russian hosting provider RUVDS, Nikita Tsaplin, stated that the goal was to see how realistic it would be to build a low-cost solution for computer access to a satellite.