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Icebreaker leaves Australia after 150 Antarctica trips :: WRAL com
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once it does, it will transport 12 people at a time to a chinese ice breaker. then a barge will ferry them from the ice breaker to another ship from australia. the stranded research ship, the akademik shokalskiy had set out to study climate change in antarctica and retrace the steps of explorer douglas moulson who studied life on the frozen continent a century ago, but they got stuck in thick ice. these are big chunks of ice, really thick, lots of years worth of growth. this is not going to be easy to get through. reporter: since christmas, three separate ice breaker ships have tried and failed to cut a path to the research vessel. once the rescue does happen, a skeleton crew will be left behind but for most of the 74 people marooned, this antarctic ordeal may soon be coming to an end. we re watching this situation very closely at the moment.
plan, trying to get to that research vessel, the akademik shokalskiy which is marooned in a remote part of antarctica by sea using ice breakers has failed. there has been three attempts to do it, three different ice breakers. they all can t manage to cut through the thick ice there. the only way now they say is to airlift the majority of the 74 passengers and crew off that ship with a helicopter but they can t do that unless the weather gets better. this morning, new video. dozens of passengers walking arm in arm, doing what they can to speed their rescue. we ve just learned the aurora can t reach us. we are preparing the helipad by getting the team to stomp down on snow and ice so the chinese helicopter from snow dragon can reach us when the weather improves. reporter: the weather conditions are not expected to get better until at least one more day. in the meantime, the crew has marked the spot in the ice where the chopper can land.