How did T-3 support a scientific station in the Arctic Ocean?

T-3 was an ice island—a large, thick mass of ice that calved from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island—that served as a platform for a manned scientific station in the Arctic Ocean from 1952 to 1974.1

Unlike standard sea ice, T-3 was a massive, stable feature that could support a long-term research facility as it drifted within the Beaufort Gyre. The station was initially established as a weather station in 1952 and was later reoccupied on a more permanent basis in 1957 to serve as an International Geophysical Year station. Its name, T-3, was derived from its identification as the third in a series of radar targets detected north of Alaska.12