Ny-Ålesund is already the world’s northernmost settlement and a center for international research. 10 different countries have research bases here.
Soon this community of international researchers will also have the world’s northernmost fiber-optic cabel, giving them the opportunity to send and receive data at 6000 times higher speed than today. The complex data which is produced at the various stations are of such size that they are either shipped out by helicopter or by the use of radio signals with limited capacity.
– Without this cable our station would probably have been shut down within four or five years. Today it is decisive that all data are up to date and sent directly, says Anne Cathrine Frøstrup at the Norwegian Mapping Authority (NMA) to NRK.
Among others, the American research organization NASA would like to use the data from NMA’s observatory at Ny-Ålesund, but then the speed of data flow would have to be better than today. Important data which are collected from Ny-Ålesund are climatic changes and ash contents in the atmosphere. The increase in natural disasters due to high seismic activity all over the world has been a vital factor in NASA’s interest in the data produced in Ny-Ålesund.
The 260 kilometer long cable together with the completion of the project is estimated to cost approximately 8 million EUR. The project was presented by Norway’s minister for research and higher education, Tora Aasland
