Heading for the North Pole on Tara Polar Station's first expedition
The Tara Polar Station left the port of Lorient on Sunday. For over a year, this floating laboratory will drift with the pack ice to study Arctic Ocean biodiversity and the impacts of climate change in the region.
By euronews
Published on 19/07/2026 - 21:24 GMT+2
TheTara Polar Station_,_ a scientific research station designed to drift with the sea ice, left the port of Lorient on Sunday afternoon on its first expedition to the North Pole. Several hundred people gathered along the quays to watch the departure, in the presence of the Minister for the Sea, Catherine Chabaud.
The crew’s objective on board the floating saucer is to gain a better understanding of the biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean and the effects of global warming in this region, which is heating up three to four times faster than the rest of the planet and where the sea ice is retreating at a rapid pace.
Twelve countries, including Germany, Canada, the United States, Spain, Switzerland and Japan, are taking part in the mission.
Shaped like an igloo set on an immense buoy, the Tara Polar Stationhas been designed to withstand the pressure of the sea ice and temperatures as low as −52 °C.
From mid-August, it will sail along the Russian coast, escorted by an icebreaker. Once it is caught in the pack ice at the beginning of September, it will allow itself to be carried by the drifting ice for 350 to 500 days, moving at an average speed of around ten kilometres a day towards the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard, where it is expected to arrive at the end of 2027.
A mission at the heart of the ice
Twelve people will live on board during the winter, including six scientists, and eighteen during the summer. The crew members, selected after a series of medical and psychological tests, have also taken part in a team-building seminar to prepare for this long mission in extreme conditions.
The overwintering crew will have to contend with five months of polar night, average temperatures of −25 °C and the presence of polar bears.
To ensure their safety during trips out onto the ice, all crew members have been trained in the use of firearms. A Lapponian herder dog will also accompany the mission to detect any approaching animals.
Gaining a better understanding of a rapidly changing Arctic
Thanks to a well built at the heart of the station and state-of-the-art scientific instruments, researchers will take more than 10,000 samples from the water column, down to a depth of 2,000 metres, as well as from the atmosphere and cavities within the sea ice.
Scientists hope in this way to collect data on Arctic biodiversity, still largely unknown, before the region is profoundly transformed.
Several programmes will also help to improve climate models, in particular by studying the role of bacteria in the reflectivity of clouds.
The cost of this first mission is estimated at 6 million euros. It marks the launch of a programme of ten expeditions scheduled between 2026 and 2045, with one mission every two years.
