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The whole Total Pole Airship team returned from the Arctic at the end of May, when the Borneo base was closed down. All the equipment used at the base has now been shipped back to Russia until next year. This temporary camp is set up in April of each year. Our airship expedition will set up its first base camp there in April 2008.
When we left Borneo, Christian Haas went straight from Spitsbergen to the Alert base in northern Canada, where he was due to carry out more pack ice thickness measurements using the EM Bird slung under a Canadian helicopter along the path from Alert to the point where we turned back to Borneo. Unfortunately, the EM Birds electronics broke down again so the measurement programme could not be completed. The EM Bird has now been taken back to the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany to locate and correct the problem in preparation for next years campaign.
Christian Haas and Yves Egel now have to cross-match their measurements for the pack ice zone we worked on so as to produce the final results of this years ground-truthing or calibration campaign.
As soon as I returned to France I flew off to Moscow to see how construction of the airship was proceeding. The envelope and gondola (or nacelle) are due to be handed over in Moscow on 30 June. Then they will be trucked to Marseille airport where the airship will be assembled and the envelope filled in the Boussiron hangar, one of very few buildings big enough to house the airship.
I will soon be giving you the detailed results of the EM Bird calibration mission.
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