The Arctic Arc - Educational Activity: Follow the Ice Drift
Securing the ARGOS beacon
© International Polar Foundation
When he left on his expedition "The Arctic Arc", Alain Hubert took with him an Argos beacon, lent by the CNES for their Argonautica programme. This beacon, traced by satellite, allows classes to follow the ice drift "live" on the internet!
Propelled by the combined action of the winds and currents, the Arctic sea ice can cover several kilometres a day! This movement is called "ice drift". We offer a new educational fact sheet for you to better understand this phenomenon that needs to be taken into account when, like Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer, you wish to cross the Arctic.
Alain left the beacon in the middle of the Arctic sea ice, and its position is being monitored by satellite. This allows us to follow it on a map by tracing its path.
All bets are now possible: will the beacon follow a straight line ? Will it make detours? Will it resist to the great cold?
The CNES (Centre National d'Etude Spatiale), our partners for this activity, has been leading the Argonautica project for a long time. Argonautica is an educational project using Argos beacons, but this is the first time that they try to follow the ice drift with this system. There are therefore many unknown parameters and lots of moments of suspense in this experiment! For example, not long after it had been positioned on the sea ice and turned on by Alain Hubert, the beacon stopped emitting for several days. We thought it was lost, its battery having been discharged by the cold. But, after 4 days of silence, the satellite made contact again: the adventure goes on!
