AURORA BOREALIS is technically unique: It is designed as a combination of a heavy icebreaker, a deep-sea drilling ship and a multi-purpose research vessel.
To date, no comparable facility for year-round polar expeditions is available worldwide.
A new dimension in Polar research
The research icebreaker AURORA BOREALIS will be the most advanced polar research vessel in the world with a multi-functional role of deep-sea drilling, supporting climate/environmental research during all seasons of the year as well as providing decision support for stakeholder governments for the next 35–40 years.
The new technological features of the autonomous research icebreaker will include dynamic positioning for precise station-keeping in closed sea-ice cover during drilling, advanced ice-forecasting and management as well as multiple helicopter support. Also, scientists are able to deploy and operate Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) from the twin moon-pools .
The Project ERICON - AURORA BOREALIS is supported by the European Commission under Framework Programme 7 Contract ERAC 211796.
