Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2022/23
Situation Report #07, 09 December 2022
Left: tired scientists are taking a little nap after lunch before being catapulted in the warm atmosphere (- 40 °C) of the drilling tent. Right: the perfect horizontal cutting made by the Swiss saw masterfully operated by Markus and Florian. Credit: ©PNRA/IPEV
Personnel @LDC: Romain Duphil (IGE), Romilly Harris-Stuart (LSCE), Gunther Lawer (AWI), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Julien Westhof (UCPH), Martin Leonhardt (AWI), Frank Wilhelms (AWI), Giuditta Celli (UNIVE, ISP), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Rob Mulvaney (BAS), Saverio Panichi (ENEA), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Andrea Devito (ENEA)
Personnel @DC: Markus Grimmer (UNIBE), Florian Krauß (UNIBE)
Weather at LDC 5 pm: sunny
Meteo at DC 5 pm: T = −°C, Wind = - knt, Wind Chill T = − °C
A lot of fine tuning on the winch settings today. Things are progressing well and we all look forward to starting drilling operation soon. We’ll re-start from the depth reached last year, 130 m. Life in the Camp is sometime hard and we are all tired. A little nap after lunch sometime helps to keep the right mood in the afternoon session.
Markus and Florian tested the Swiss saw in the cold lab. They got very good results and feeling from the cutting. They’ll concentrate in the coming days on the DEP that will be used to determine the dielectrical properties of the ice, a very useful parameter to understand ice characteristics.
What we did today:
- sorted and unpacked boxes
- started installation of spinner
- fixed slush-pan
- the winch gives slack when switching it off: assumption unfavorable programming of the inverter: activated windows XP to run configuration software, installed serial port drivers, status: communication active, but missing configuration file, asked back home to locate file
- drip-pans placed under core processing line
- curtain placed on core buffer
- some surface work started, including GPS base station
Frank Wilhelms & Rob Mulvaney - LDC, 09.12.2022