They landed near Russia’s Baneo polar base

Three Russians last week set a world record for parachuting from the Earth’s stratosphere to the North Pole, the project’s organizers told Reuters, in a mission that was also a test of a prototype of a new communications system for use in the Arctic.

Mikhail Korniyenko, Alexander Lynnik and Denis Yefremov jump from an Ilyushin-76 aircraft at 10,500 meters (34,450 feet) The jump took about two and a half minutes of free fall before the parachute opened at an altitude of 1,000 meters above the ground. The descent was captured on a spectacular video.

Organizer Nikita Tsaplin said the trio suffered some frostbite on their cheeks despite wearing heated masks. When they fell at over 300 km/h, the air temperature was about -50 degrees Celsius (-58 degrees Fahrenheit), which felt like -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit).

They landed near Russia’s Baneo polar base, and Chaplin said they were able to use diesel generators to power servers and establish a connection to satellites. The devices were earlier dropped from lower heights.

Communications are likely to become even more important as countries such as Russia, the United States and China compete for resources, trade routes and military dominance in the Arctic.

Chaplin said the Russians were able to send data through the experimental system, although he acknowledged that at this time the system’s capabilities were completely different from those of U.S.-based Iridium Communications, which provides coverage of both Earth’s poles.

“Of course, our solution is just a prototype, but we can still connect to our satellites and transmit data through our servers,” said Tsaplin, managing partner and co-founder of Russian hosting provider RUVDS.

“Of course, it’s not Iridium yet, but we’ve taken some small steps in that direction, and that’s really the mission – to see how realistic it is to build a low-cost solution for accessing satellites from a computer”.

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