Ivan Popov, the specialist of our Institute, has completed annual maintenance and repair work on the equipment, deployed at the ROSCOSMOS State Corporation’s Antarctic ERS Regional Center, and now he is returning home.

Over the past three months, Ivan has been preparing the Ground-based Complex for receiving and processing ERS data for operation in winter conditions at the South Pole: conducted maintenance work on antenna complex; updated software; summarized materials relating to author's support and technical supervision; provided training the professionals from the 66th Russian Antarctic Expedition’s wintering team in the operation of automation equipment of the Ground-based complex.

On March 28, the research vessel Akademik Fedorov went out of Tala Bay near the Progress station. On the way to Russia, the research vessel Akademik Fedorov will take wintering teams from Molodezhnaya, Bellingshausen, Novolazarevskaya stations and Vechernyaya Mountain, the station of the Belarusian Antarctic Expedition. The arrival of the vessel to St. Petersburg is scheduled for mid-June.

The Antarctic ERS Regional Center of Roscosmos State Corporation is situated on the territory of the year-round Russian station Progress and is part of the Integrated Geographically distributed ERS Information system (IGDERSIS), designed and built by the specialists and engineers of our Institute.

In two years of operation, RIPI’s specialists have remotely provided scheduling and receiving satellite data during about four hundred communications sessions with subsequent relaying of received data to processing complexes across the IGDERSIS in Moscow.

RIPI Press Service