On July 8, 2025, Tara Polar Station, the new floating research station recently acquired by France's Tara Ocean Foundation, deployed to the Arctic Ocean for its very first test "drift."
Tara Ocean intends to have the 26- by 16-metre research station deploy on multiple successive expeditions lasting 14 months, drifting with the Arctic ice pack to enable its occupants to collect scientific data.
On July 8, Tara Polar Station left Longyearbyen in Norway to meet up with the icebreaking research vessel Polarstern (operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute of Germany), which cleared a path for the station to reach the sea ice, where Tara Ocean said she is now "voluntarily trapped".
Tara Ocean said the test drift will allow its team of experts to make final adjustments and to trial scientific equipment ahead of the research station's first "major drift", which is scheduled for 2026.
Tara Polar Station was built to withstand extreme ice pressures as well as temperatures as low as –52 degrees Celsius, thanks to a reinforced, ice- and abrasion-resistant aluminium hull.