French explorer abandons Arctic mission after airship crash
FAYENCE, France (AFP) — A French explorer was forced Tuesday to call off a scientific expedition to the North Pole after his airship broke from its moorings on the Riviera and crashed into a nearby house.
Jean-Louis Etienne told reporters at the scene of the accident that his planned trip to measure the thickness of the Arctic ice cap in April "won't be taking place with this vehicle, and there is no other like it in the world".
Etienne's Total Pole Airship, a unique prototype built in Russia over the past three years with sponsorship from the French oil giant Total, was ripped from its docking mast by a powerful gust of wind early Tuesday morning.
"The airship is destroyed, it can't be repaired," he said. "I feel like crying... it's a huge disappointment."
Etienne said he was determined to make another attempt at the Arctic mission, but not this year -- since April is the only period when ice cap measurements can be taken.
Separately, the 10-member crew of a French sailboat that has spent more than 500 days trapped in the Arctic broke free of polar ice this week and started heading home.
Part of a European scientific mission called Damocles, the Tara was sent to study climate variations in the Arctic waters, ice and atmosphere as part of the International Polar Year in 2007-2008.
It became trapped in the ice sheet northeast of Siberia in September 2006, and has since drifted several thousand kilometres, carried by shifting blocks of ice to a point between Greenland and Norway's Svalbard archipelago.
On Sunday the boat entered a large expanse of free-moving water, and was able to start an engine and begin pushing its way eastwards between the ice blocks, the operation's logistics chief Romain Trouble told AFP.
Loaded with 60 tonnes of scientific equipment, and difficult to manoeuvre, the Tara is expected to arrive in Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, by Thursday night.
From there it is expected home in France within a month.
