SS Chelyuskin was a Soviet steamship, reinforced to navigate through polar ice, that in 1934 became ice-bound in Arctic waters during a navigation along the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok and sank. 111 people were on board the Chelyuskin, and all but one were rescued by air. The expedition's task was to determine the possibility to travel by non-icebreaker through the Northern Maritime Route in a single navigation season.

Otto Yulyevich Shmidt, better known as Otto Schmidt, was a Soviet scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesman, and academician.