Polar exploration is the process of exploration of the polar regions of Earth – the Arctic region and Antarctica – particularly with the goal of reaching the North Pole and South Pole, respectively. Historically, this was accomplished by explorers making often arduous travels on foot or by sled in these regions, known as a polar expedition. More recently, exploration has been accomplished with technology, particularly with satellite imagery.
From 600 BC to 300 BC, Greek philosophers theorized that the planet was a Spherical Earth with North and South polar regions. By 150 AD, Ptolemy published Geographia, which notes a hypothetical Terra Australis Incognita. However, due to harsh weather conditions, the poles themselves would not be reached for centuries after that. When they finally were reached, the achievement was realized only a few years apart. (Full article...)
Amundsen, Hanssen, Hassel, and Wisting at Polheim at the South Pole
The first ever expedition to reach the Geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four other crew members made it to the geographical south pole on 14 December 1911, which would prove to be five weeks ahead of the competitive British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and about a year later heard that Scott and his four companions had perished on their return journey.
Amundsen's initial plans had focused on the Arctic and the conquest of the North Pole by means of an extended drift in an icebound ship. He obtained the use of Fridtjof Nansen's polar exploration ship Fram, and undertook extensive fundraising. Preparations for this expedition were disrupted when, in 1909, the rival American explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary each claimed to have reached the North Pole. Amundsen then changed his plan and began to prepare for a conquest of the South Pole; uncertain of the extent to which the public and his backers would support him, he kept this revised objective secret. When he set out in June 1910, he led even his crew to believe they were embarking on an Arctic drift, and revealed their true Antarctic destination only when Fram was leaving their last port of call, Madeira. (Full article...)
John Cabot (Italian: Giovanni Caboto[dʒoˈvannikaˈbɔːto]; c. 1450 – c. 1499) was an Italiannavigator and explorer. His 1497 voyage to the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII, King of England is the earliest known European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse visits to Vinland in the eleventh century. To mark the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Cabot's expedition, both the Canadian and British governments declared Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland as representing Cabot's first landing site. However, alternative locations have also been proposed. (Full article...)
Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957), an American naval officer, was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. He is also known for discovering Mount Sidley, the largest dormant volcano in Antarctica.
Byrd claimed to be the first to reach both the North and South Poles by air. However, there is some controversy as to whether or not Byrd was actually the first person to reach the North Pole. It is generally believed that the distance Byrd claimed to fly was longer than the possible fuel range of his airplane. (Full article...)
Claiming of Adelie Land for the British, Monday, 1200, 5 January 1931. Photo taken by William E Howard, held by the University of Newcastle Library's Cultural Collections.The British Australian (and) New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) was a research expedition into Antarctica between 1929 and 1931, involving two voyages over consecutive Austral summers. It was a British Commonwealth initiative, driven more by geopolitics than science, and funded by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
He and four companions attained the pole on 17 January 1912, where they found that a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen had preceded them by 34 days. Scott's party of five died on the return journey from the pole; some of their bodies, journals, and photographs were found by a search party eight months later. The expedition, named after its supply ship, was a private venture financed by public contributions and a government grant. It had further backing from the Admiralty, which released experienced seamen to the expedition, and from the Royal Geographical Society. The expedition's team of scientists carried out a comprehensive scientific programme, while other parties explored Victoria Land and the Western Mountains. An attempted landing and exploration of King Edward VII Land was unsuccessful. A journey to Cape Crozier in June and July 1911 was the first extended sledging journey in the depths of the Antarctic winter. (Full article...)
Depiction of a northern sea route between Europe and the Pacific The Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (Russian: Главное Управление Северного Морского Пути, romanized: Glavnoe upravlenie Severnogo morskogo puti), also known as Glavsevmorput or GUSMP (Russian: ГУСМП), was a Soviet government organization in charge of the maritime Northern Sea Route, established in January 1932 and dissolved in 1964. (Full article...)
Countries with research stations in the Artic. Countries with stations (Blue). A number of governments maintain permanent research stations in the Arctic. Also known as Arctic bases, polar stations or ice stations, these bases are widely distributed across the northern polar region of Earth.
Historically few research stations have been permanent. Most of them were temporary, being abandoned after the completion of the project or owing to lack of funding to continue the research. Some of these were military or listening posts created as a result of the proximity of the U.S. and Soviet Union to each other's landmass across the polar region. (Full article...)
Together with Grigore Antipa, he was one of the most noted promoters of natural sciences in Romania. Racoviță was the first Romanian to have gone on a scientific research expedition to the Antarctic. He was an influential professor, scholar and researcher, and served as President of the Romanian Academy from 1926 to 1929. (Full article...)
Reinhold Andreas Messner (German:[ˈʁaɪnhɔltˈmɛsnɐ]; born 17 September 1944) is an Italian climber, explorer, and author from the German-speaking province of South Tyrol. He made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. He was the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, doing so without supplementary oxygen. Messner was the first to cross Antarctica and Greenland with neither snowmobiles nor dog sleds and also crossed the Gobi Desert alone. He is widely considered to be the greatest mountaineer of all time.
He was orphaned at the age of seven and after being educated in Paris, he was sent to Saint Malo to study navigation. He became a lieutenant of the French East India Company in 1731. He succeeded in convincing his employer to provide him with two ships and send him on an exploration mission in the South Atlantic. With his ships Aigle and Marie he discovered on 1 January 1739 a tiny island which was named Bouvet Island after him, the world’s remotest island; however, he mislabelled the coordinates for the island, causing it to be lost until it was rediscovered seven decades later in 1808. Shortly afterwards, he had to abandon the expedition because most of his crew had fallen ill; his ship then called at the Cape of Good Hope and returned to France. (Full article...)
Born in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904, from which he was sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the Nimrod Expedition of 1907–1909, he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude of 88°23′ S, only 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles or 180 kilometres) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. On returning home, Shackleton was knighted for his achievements by King Edward VII. (Full article...)
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Location of Yana Bay in northern Siberia, on whose frozen surface Merkury Vagin was murdered Merkury Vagin (Russian: Меркурий Вагин) (died 1712) was a Russian Arctic explorer.
A map of the paths of James Cook and Russian explorers in the North Pacific during the 18th century, including those Fyodorov helped guide. Ivan Fyodorov (Russian: Ива́н Фёдоров; died c. 1733) was a Russian navigator and commanding officer of the expedition to northern Alaska in 1732.
After the First Kamchatka expedition of Vitus Bering, Russian exploration efforts were continued by Bering's lieutenant Martin Spanberg and the navigator Fyodorov. In 1732, with participants of the First Kamchatka expedition, land-surveyor Mikhail Gvozdev, and the navigator K. Moshkov, Fyodorov sailed to Dezhnev Cape, the easternmost point of Asia, in the St. Gabriel (Russian: Святой Гавриил, Sviatoi Gavriil). From there, after having replenished the water supply on 5 August, they sailed east and soon came near the mainland at the Cape Prince of Wales. They charted the northwestern coast of Alaska and mapped their route. By doing this, Fyodorov and Gvozdev completed the discovery of the Bering Strait, once started by Semyon Dezhnyov and Fedot Alekseyev and continued by Bering. Their expedition also discovered three previously unknown islands. (Full article...)
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Location of Yana Bay in northern Siberia, on whose frozen surface Yakov Permyakov was murdered Yakov Permyakov (Russian: Яков Пермяков; died 1712) was a Russian seafarer, explorer, merchant, and Cossack.
Svyataya Anna The Brusilov expedition (Russian: Экспедиция Брусилова) was a Russian maritime expedition to the Arctic led by Captain Georgy Brusilov, which set out in 1912 to explore and map a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific via a northeast passage known as the Northern Sea Route. The expedition was ill-planned and ill-executed by Brusilov[according to whom?], and disappeared without a trace. Earlier searches were unsuccessful, and the fate of the ship and its crew is still not known.
One of the members of the expedition was the second Russian woman to go to the Arctic, Yerminia Zhdanko, a 22-year-old nurse and daughter of a general of the Russo-Japanese War. (Full article...)
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