From the Moscow Times…
Two deep-sea submersibles made a test dive in polar waters Sunday ahead of a mission to be the first to reach the seabed under the North Pole. It took an hour for Mir-1 and Mir-2, each carrying one pilot, to reach the seabed at a depth of 1,311 meters, 87 kilometers north of Russia’s northernmost archipelago, Franz Josef Land in the Barents Sea, Itar-Tass reported. “It was the first time a submersible had worked under the icecap and it proved they can do this,” Anatoly Sagalevich, the pilot of Mir-1 was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass as he left the sub….The mission involves a nuclear-powered icebreaker clearing a path to the Pole for the expedition’s flagship Akademik Fyodorov. This will launch the submersibles to scoop samples from the seabed for research. The mission will also plant a flag on the seabed under the Pole to claim the territory symbolically for Russia.
