RV Polarstern

RV Polarstern (meaning pole star) is a German research icebreaker of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. Polarstern was commissioned in 1982 and is mainly used for research in the Arctic and Antarctica. She is planned to be replaced by Polarstern II around the year 2017, after it was decided that the European Research Icebreaker Aurora Borealis is not going to be built in her original form.

Polarstern was built by the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft at Kiel and the Nobiskrug at Rendsburg. The ship has a length of 118 metres (387 feet) and is a double-hulled icebreaker. She is operational at temperatures as low as -50°C. (-58°F) Polarstern can break through ice 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) thick at a speed of 5 knots. Thicker ice up to 3 m (9.8 ft) thick can be broken by ramming.

History

On 7 September 1991, Polarstern, assisted by the Swedish arctic icebreaker Oden reached the North Pole as the first conventional powered vessels. Both scientific parties and crew took oceanographic and geological samples and had a common tug of war and a football game on an ice floe. Polarstern again reached the pole exactly 10 years later together with the USCGC Healy. She returned for a third time on 22 August 22 2011 at exactly 9.42 a.m. This time she reported the most frequently recurring ice thickness at 0.9 m compared with 2 m in 2001, which corresponds to the long-term average.