Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Drilling Site (75.29917 degS, 122.44516 degE)

Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Carlo Barbante (ISP-CNR, PI), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Calogero Monaco (ENEA), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Jakob Schwander (unibe), Thomas Stocker (unibe), Remo Walther (unibe)

Weather at LDC: sunny,low wind

Meteo at DC 6 pm: T = −31°C, Wind = 10 knt, Wind Chill T = −42°C

Today, another calm day at LDC. Some house keeping took place, such as cleaning one of the stoves that had problems burning fuel, or closing the windows of the AWI workshop with aluminum tape. Matthias moved from the sleeping tent to the caravan (“Le Château”) so that tomorrow this tent can be closed for winter over.

At RADIX, we were excited to pull up the drill after 52 hours, an unfortunate record! We have changed the drill head to a less aggressive one and, after several attempts with the usual interventions (cleaning the motor, liberating the flow valve from clogs, etc.), we managed to resume drilling in the new hole that starts at 270 m depth. Deviation drilling with RADIX has therefore been successful and we continued drilling to a new depth of 295 m in the new hole.

RADIX drilling depth: 300.0 m (old hole), 295.0 m (new hole).

Thomas Stocker and Carlo Barbante