RV Polarstern - History

History

On September 7, 1991, Polarstern, assisted by the Swedish arctic ice breaker 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. It returned for a third time on August 22, 2011 at exactly 9.42 a.m. This time it reported the most frequently recurring ice thickness at 0.9m compared with 2m in 2001, which corresponds to the long-term average.

On March 2, 2008, one of the vessel's helicopters crashed on a routine flight to the Antarctic Neumayer II base. The German pilot and a Dutch researcher were killed, three other passengers injured.

On October 17, 2008, Polarstern, as the first research ship ever traveled through both the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage in one cruise and thus circumnavigated the North Pole.

Captain Start End
Lothar Suhrmeyer December 1982 November 1992
Dieter Zapf June 1983 May 1985
Ernst-Peter Greve July 1985 August 1998
Heinz Jonas March 1987 December 1995
Heinz Allers January 1994 October 1995
Uwe Pahl March 1996 unknown
Jürgen Keil March 1996 March 2003
Dr. Martin Boche July 2000 July 2002
Uwe Domke October 2002 October 2004
Stefan Schwarze January 2005 unknown

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