Flights made from base camps
Three base camps will be set up in succession on the pack ice: one at the Geographic North Pole, one at the Magnetic North Pole and one on the ice in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of Alaska. We will be making a number of radial flights from these hubs. At an average speed of 35 knots (65 kph) our airship can fly for 15 hours and cover 1,000 km.

Mooring between flights
At the end of each flight, the ground team will attach the nose of the airship to the mooring mast. Once the airship is “parked”, we will made sure the wheel located under the nacelle can move freely on the ice and that the airship can turn so that it always faces into the wind. Ground maintenance will be just as rigorous as for other aircraft. In April and May there is continuous daylight on the Arctic Ocean, so after a change of crew, the airship will take off again for another flight as long as the weather remains favourable.

The crew
The airship will have a combined ground crew plus air crew of 15, including pilots, mechanic, electronics specialist and camp crew.

Base camp equipment
-Fuel supplies for the engine.
- A few reserve bottles of helium.
- A generator to recharge batteries and to power the on-board electronics and the compressor used to maintain helium pressure in the envelope.
- An apparatus to pre-heat the engines before start-up.