OREANDA-NEWS Russian scientists have successfully completed the first tests of high-tech sledge for transportation of heavy loads on ice in Antarctica near the Russian station "Progress". This was reported by the press service of the Fund for infrastructure and educational programs of the RUSNANO Group.

"In Antarctica near the Russian station" Progress "completed testing of an experimental sample of high-tech sledge for transportation of heavy loads on ice, designed and manufactured in St. Petersburg "Research and production Association  for processing plastics named "Komsomolskaya Pravda". The program of tests included Assembly and dismantling of sleds, and also short tests on various sites characteristic of a route between stations "Progress" and "East", - it is told in the message.

It is noted that the planned activities are fully implemented ahead of schedule. Five specialists of the enterprises of the polymer cluster of St. Petersburg and seven employees of the Arctic and Antarctic research Institute took part in the Assembly and sea trials. Full tests of sleds with the transition to the  “East” is scheduled for next year.

The need for the creation and subsequent testing of special heavy cargo sledge associated with the project of construction of a new wintering complex on the inland Russian Antarctic station "East". In the course of the work it is planned to build a new winter service and residential complex in one of the most remote areas of the planet. The complex will have autonomy up to nine months a year, providing accommodation and work for up to 35 people in the summer Antarctic season and 15 people in the winter season.

Its construction will require the delivery of hundreds of tons of cargo through 1.5 thousand km of ice desert, where temperatures even in the "summer" months rarely rise above minus 30 degrees Celsius. The installation of the new station will take only two weeks. This would require two dozen sledges with the cargo capacity of 60 tons each. At the same time existing in the world analogues of Antarctic sledge have a carrying capacity of only 15 tons.