Antarctic subglacial drilling rig: Part IV. Electrical and electronic control system

Bedgap: where next for Antarctic subglacial mapping?

The recently published Bedmap2 datasets mark the culmination of several decades of subice and subocean Antarctic topographic surveying by many nations, but maps of the topographic data distribution show that in the global context, the Antarctic bed remains very poorly sampled. Most of the remaining large unmapped areas on Earth lie under Antarctic ice and polar surveying continues to be difficu...

Ergonomic Exposure Assessment on a Drilling Rig

Recent advances in understanding Antarctic subglacial lakes and hydrology

It is now well documented that over 400 subglacial lakes exist across the bed of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. They comprise a variety of sizes and volumes (from the approx. 250 km long Lake Vostok to bodies of water less than 1 km in length), relate to a number of discrete topographic settings (from those contained within valleys to lakes that reside in broad flat terrain) and exhibit a range of dy...

Antarctic subglacial lake exploration: first results and future plans.

After more than a decade of planning, three attempts were made in 2012-2013 to access, measure in situ properties and directly sample subglacial Antarctic lake environments. First, Russian scientists drilled into the top of Lake Vostok, allowing lake water to infiltrate, and freeze within, the lower part of the ice-core borehole, from which further coring would recover a frozen sample of surfac...

Clean subglacial access: prospects for future deep hot-water drilling.

Accessing and sampling subglacial environments deep beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet presents several challenges to existing drilling technologies. With over half of the ice sheet believed to be resting on a wet bed, drilling down to this environment must conform to international agreements on environmental stewardship and protection, making clean hot-water drilling the most viable option. Such ...