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Time is running out for delivery of 5,000 tons of containers and modules for the Vostok station to Antarctica. Sevmporput had an estimated arrival at Prydz Bay on the eastern shores of the continent on November 20. However, since mid-October the giant nuclear-powered container carrier has sailed zigzag outside the Angolan coast in the South-Atlantic with a broken propeller. Rosatomflot, the operator of Russia’s state-owned fleet of civilian nuclear-powered vessels, chose to keep silent about the trouble and has not answered any questions on the issue from The Barents Observer. Social media sites, however, had a lively debate about the...

They've cracked it - again! A Russian team of ice explorers has broken through to a lake buried beneath nearly 4 kilometres of Antarctic ice. The lake has been isolated from the surface for 15 million years and could hold extreme forms of life never seen before, perhaps even offering clues as to what life on other planets might look like. Lake Vostok is Antarctica's largest subglacial lake. It was reached once before in 2012, when a Russian team finished drilling a hole some 3770 metres down to its surface. They claimed that water samples they obtained from this borehole...

Our country and the world marked a great moment: 50 years since the flight of the first woman in space: June 16th, 1963, by Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. At the time of her space flight she was only 26. The first woman cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union Tereshkova graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy with honors, and received a PhD in technical sciences. She was a professor and the author of over 50 scientific papers. She holds the rank of air force major general and was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Valentina Tereshkova has...

Tomorrow the world marks 52 years since Yuri Gagarin's historic flight into space and 32 years since the first launch of the Space Shuttle. Scientists, artists, educators, and fans of space will be celebrating these milestones at over 320 parties and events in 50 countries on all 7 continents. Dubbed 'the World Space Party,' Yuri's Night is in its 13th year. "The level of interest and enthusiasm this year has been just amazing," said Dr. Ryan Kobrick, Executive Director of Yuri's Night. "We've already hit 300 events, and we expect to register many more by Friday. This is officially our...

The penetration to relict water of subglacial Lake Vostok happened at last on 5 February at 20.25 Moscow time. On 4 February there was a contact of the drill with the water lens at the borehole depth of 3766 m. The ice core bottom segment extracted from this depth served as evidence – the surface of the lower 70 cm of the ice core was glazed, as if it were submerged to water just before recovery. No ducts or capillaries in the ice core body were visually observed at this. Exactly this contact with the water lens in the borehole...

An American professor and expert of the Antarctic said he believes contact with a team of Russian scientists that has not made contact with colleagues in the U.S for seven days has merely been busy as they drill into a lake buried beneath the Antarctic ice for 20 million years. Professor John Priscu told usnews.com in an email that the crews have been working ‘round the clock’ to beat the end of Antarctic summer, which ends Tuesday. Afterwards, temperatures will fall to deadly levels.

Soviet officials lied about the success of Yuri Gagarin's historic 1961 flight into space and covered up the fact that he had landed more than 200 miles away from where they were expecting him, a new book discloses. The Soviet Union held up his mission, the first manned flight into space, as a major Cold War propaganda coup, portraying it as a glitch-free triumph of Communist ideology. However, a new book published on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin's famous flight has revealed that scientists twice miscalculated where he would land which is why there was nobody there...

The southernmost continent is coolingVostok is infamous for its controversial ice cores that some say are evidence that the world is warming. Vostok set a record for the coldest April in history by over 20 degrees Fahrenheit. (Source: NOAA)The Vostok Station rests at the so-called "Pole of Cold" in the heart of Antarctica.  International climatology researchers have used the station as a drilling point.  The ice cores they've extracted have become the subject of substantial controversy.  Some scientists say that they provide evidence of global warming, while the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research has expressed concern that they were contaminated....

Cold and Deep: Antarctica's Lake Vostok has two big neighbors Sid Perkins GREAT LAKES. Lake Vostok and the newly described 90°E and Sovetskaya Lakes lie beneath a kilometers-thick blanket of ice. The black square in the inset shows the outline of this satellite image on a map of Antarctica; the cross indicates the South Pole. R.E. Bell, et al. Trapped beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet are two bodies of water that rival North America's Great Lakes, new analyses suggest. The geological setting of these huge, unfrozen lakes hints that they may harbor ecosystems that have been isolated for millions of...

The Space Age began 43 years ago today. Man's First Flight Into Space: Vostok 1, 12 April 1961. Crew: Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin [1934-1968] “Three press releases were prepared, one for success, two for failures. It was only known ten minutes after burnout, 25 minutes after launch, if a stable orbit had been achieved. The payload included life-support equipment and radio and television to relay information on the condition of the pilot. The flight was automated; Gagarin's controls were locked to prevent him from taking control of the ship. A key was available in a sealed envelope in case it became...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 28 The Lost World of Lake Vida Credit & Copyright: Thomas Nylen & Andrew Fountain (PSU), NASA, NSF Explanation: A lake hidden beneath 19 meters of ice has been found near the bottom of the world that might contain an ecosystem completely separate from our own. In a modern version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic book Lost World, scientists are now plotting a mission to...

Vostok: The Lake of ShadowsCover Story FATE Magazine 2002-06-01 00:00:00 by Scott Corrales “Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left.” —H. P. Lovecraft, “At the Mountains of Madness” The inspiration for this article began in the summer of 1996, when a series of email messages began to appear suggesting the possibility that “someone” or “something” was surreptitiously removing all recent maps of Antarctica. The notion was so outrageous that even die-hard conspiracy theorists found themselves having to clarify the...