Arktika 2007 () was a 2007 expedition in which Russia performed the first ever crewed descent to the ocean bottom at the North Pole, as part of research related to the 2001 Russian territorial claim, one of many territorial claims in the Arctic, made possible, in part, because of Arctic shrinkage. As well as dropping a titanium tube containing the Russian flag, the submersibles collected specimens of Arctic flora and fauna and apparently recorded video of the dives. The "North Pole-35" (abbreviated as "NP-35") manned drifting ice station was established.
On January 10, 2008, three of expedition members who performed the descent to the ocean bottom at the North Pole, Anatoly Sagalevich, and Artur Chilingarov were awarded titles Hero of the Russian Federation "for courage and heroism showed in extremal conditions and successful completion of High-Latitude Arctic Deep-Water Expedition."
Program
The expedition, part of the Russian program for the 2007–2008 International Polar Year, used the Akademik Fedorov research ship, with both MIR submersibles on board and the nuclear icebreaker Rossiya (Russia) led it through the Arctic ice. The ships had two Mi-8 helicopters and geological probe devices, and Il-18 aircraft with gravimetric devices. Its aim was to investigate the structure and evolution of the Earth's crust in the Arctic regions neighbouring Eurasia, such as the regions of Mendeleev Ridge, Alpha Ridge and Lomonosov Ridge, to discover whether they are linked with the Siberian shelf.
Expedition
The base ship Akademik Fedorov left Saint Petersburg on July 10, 2007, for the expedition. Off Baltiysk, it took aboard the two MIR Deep Submergence Vehicles manufactured by the Finnish company Rauma Oceanics from Akademik Mstislav Keldysh On July 22 the vessel arrived at Murmansk, and sailed for the North Pole three days later, behind the nuclear icebreaker Russia. After five hours, the Akademik Fedorov began drifting in the Barents Sea because an electric motor controlling its propeller failed. The Russia, 20 hours ahead by that time, turned to help. Nine hours later the crew of Akademik Fedorov repaired the motor and the ship continued its voyage, staying close to the Russia. On July 27 The icebreaker landed a group of marine biologists on the Kheysa island, the site of Russia's Krenkel observatory to conduct research for the International Polar Year.
First stage: high-latitude deep-water Arctic expedition
Test descent
On July 29 the Akademik Fedorov approached a large ice-hole, surrounded by thick ice at , north of Franz Josef Land. There, the submersibles, each with one person on board, performed test dives. Anatoly Sagalevich took the MIR-1 down at 9:36 Moscow Time and Yevgeny Chernyaev followed at the controls of MIR-2 at 10:00. At 10:32 MIR-1 reached the seabed at a depth of , and by 11:10 MIR-2 also was at the ocean bottom. Both surfaced at 14:20.
North Pole descent
Descents were carried out on August 2, 2007, in both MIR Deep Submergence Vehicles. The MIR-1's crew consisted of pilot Anatoly Sagalevich (researcher of the Oceanology Institute), Russian polar explorer Arthur Chilingarov and businessman Vladimir Gruzdev. The MIR-2's crew comprised pilot Yevgeny Chernyaev of Russia, Australian adventurer Mike McDowell, and Swede Frederik Paulsen Jr., head of Ferring Pharmaceuticals).
MIR-1 began its dive at 9:28 Moscow Time and at 12:08 reached the seabed below the North Pole. MIR-2 began its dive at 9:47 and at 12:35 reached the seabed down. At 12:35 the bathyscaphes were apart and MIR-1 moved near MIR-2. At 13:46 both submersibles began to ascend, with MIR-1 surfacing at 18:08 and MIR-2 at 19:15.
On the seabed, below the Polar ice, MIR-1 planted a tall titanium Russian flag, made at Kaliningrad's "Fakel" 'design bureau.' It also left a time capsule, containing a message for future generations and a flag of the pro-President Vladimir Putin United Russia party. Soil and water samples of the seabed were taken during the mission.
According to the USS Nautilus measurements, the sea depth at the North Pole in 1958 was only
Controversy over TV images
Russian state broadcaster Rossiya had enhanced footage of the Arktika expedition with sequences taken by MIR submersibles for the 1997 film Titanic, as an illustration of the submarines in action, in which the Finnish-built bathyscaphes had explored the wrecked liner on the Atlantic seabed. The same images were rebroadcast by Reuters, which mistook them as actual footage of part of the expedition.