Frozen Plane Wreckage
Wednesday, 4th March 2009 by James Turnbull
These buildings are what make up Molodyozhnaya, one of the original Soviet research stations in Antarctica, and the site of an unusually large number of plane crashes.
The research station was established way back in 1962 to study meteorology, and was the launch site of over 1000 sounding rockets. But after the Soviet collapse, Russia cut back their expenditure on Antarctica explorations and permanently closed the station.1
Just to the west of the station, we find our first crashed plane in the snow. This Aeroflot Il-14 was heading back to the USSR when the engine failed shortly after take-off, and the plane crashed, killing 4 of the 7 passengers.
Despite the crash site being very clearly visible, this didn't happen anytime recently. The image was taken in February 2006, but the crash itself occurred all the way back in 1979!
The cold weather has preserved the crashed plane, and the harsh conditions make any attempt to move it impossible.
Browsing around the area, we can spot another four planes, all seemingly crashed and abandoned. Perhaps this the real reason for closing the station - they kept losing too many planes!
Thanks to GEarthHacks.
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Russia have talked about resuming operations at Molodyozhnaya in "2007 or 2008" but so far nothing has happened. ↩︎
Is that some kind of vehicle? https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=-67.674976,45.803397&z=17
There a lot of “fresh” track in the snow near most of the building. Since there should be new snow sometime, it’s look like there is still someone going around. Maybe spy from another country…
Frozen plane on a stick. Maybe they are planning a marketing campaign for a new frozen treat.
Hi there. This station is decommissioned nowerdays but not abandoned. There are some inhabitant for several monthes per year.
http://www.aari.ru/projects/Antarctic/stations/mol/mol_ru.html
>Perhaps this the real reason for closing the station – they kept losing too many planes!
No there was just 2 or 3 serious aircraft fall for all Antarctic history. The reason to freaze the station was simple: money.
BTW the first plane doesn’t look crashed. May be it’s just abandoned. On the station there was airfield with several planes and helycopters on duty. Il-14 is an old plane and is not user since 80th, so looks like this plane was broken somedays, and they deside not to repair it.
The planes have not crashed. If you read Russian comments on this Wikimapia site:
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=-67.671202&lon=45.827043&z=17&l=1&m=a&v=2
It says that the plane was abandoned, it was the last of the big Russian planes to fly in Antarctica. The station was abandoned in 2000 due to financing problems.