ST. PETERSBURG, September 16 (RIA Novosti, Anna Novak) - Russian polar explorers have chosen a new ice floe for the North Pole-34 drifting station in the Arctic Ocean Friday, an official said.

"The ice floe is located at 75 degrees north latitude and 120 degrees east longitude," Alexander Danilov, the deputy head of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said. "It is five kilometers long, five kilometers wide, and some two meters thick."

The station will open in two days.

The 14 researchers will continue exploring the Central Arctic region, which Russia first began to study back in 1937 at the world's first drifting station, North Pole-1.

The new station will replace North Pole-33, which was dismantled in early September. The researchers and equipment were evacuated from the station because the ice floe split into ten fragments