Visiting Polarstern

Eberhard Kohlberg, the coordinator of the wintering teams at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), took me and some of my colleagues out to the docks in Bremerhaven, Germany, to visit the research vessel Polarstern. In case you don’t know yet, Polarstern is the ship that will transport our EDEN ISS greenhouse and all of its supplies to Antarctica!

Polarstern is a master piece of engineering and backbone of the German polar research. Although Polarstern is over 30 years old, older than me, it still conducts state-of-the-art research journeys to the Artic and Antartic. Rated as an icebreaker, Polarstern can break through 1,5 meter thick ice. The ship has space for a crew of 44 and additional 55 researchers.

For a brief moment I was the captain of Polarstern! However, the ship was in a dry dock for maintenance, so I couldn’t take it anywhere.

You can visit the Polarstern website, if you are looking for more information about the vessel, its journeys and the research conducted on it.