Severnaya Zemlya appeared to the north of the archipelago. Although located not far off the northern coast of Russia, nested among Arctic ice-locked waters, the archipelago that is now known as Severnaya Zemlya was not formally recorded until the 20th century. Earlier explorers deemed that there was a land mass in the general area of the archipelago, such as in the report by Matvei Gedenschtrom and Yakov Sannikov made in 1810 at the time of their exploration of the New Siberian Islands. Later in the 19th century Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld during the Vega Expedition sailed very close to this land in 1878
Novaya Zemlya are still used for airfields today. The Soviet Air Force maintained a presence at Rogachevo on the southern part of the southern island, on the westernmost peninsula (). It was used primarily for interceptor aircraft operations, but also provided logistical support for the nearby nuclear test area. Novaya Zemlya was the site of one of the two major nuclear test sites managed by the USSR, used for air drops and underground testing of the largest of Soviet nuclear bombs, in particular the October 30, 1961 air burst explosion of Tsar Bomba, the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. The