Otto Schmidt (ship)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Otto Schmidt was a Soviet and later Russian icebreaking research ship that operated from 1979 to 1991. It was part of the Project 97N family, a group of large diesel-electric icebreakers designed for scientific work where open water meets the polar ice. The ship was 73 meters long, 18.6 meters wide, and displaced about 3,700 tonnes. Its diesel-electric power system used three main engines and two electric motors, giving a top speed of 15 knots and the ability to break through 60 cm thick ice at about 2 knots. It carried a crew of 54 and could host up to 30 scientists for missions lasting up to 55 days.

Built at the Admiralty Shipyard in Leningrad, Otto Schmidt was laid down on 27 December 1977, launched on 27 December 1978, and completed on 30 August 1979. It was named after Otto Yulyevich Schmidt, the Soviet Arctic explorer. During its 12-year career, it completed 40 scientific expeditions in the Arctic, including a 40-day drifting mission in the Greenland Sea connected to the North Pole-28 project.

After 1991, funding shortages left the ship laid up in Murmansk. It was sold to a private company, departed Murmansk under its own power on 8 August 1996, and was scrapped in Alang, India, in September 1996.