Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2023/24

Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Olivier Alemany (CNRS), Philippe Possenti (CNRS), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Remi Dallmayr (AWI), Gunther Lawer (AWI), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Andrea Ceinini (ENEA), Federico Scoto (CNR), Tamara Gerber (UCPH), Iben Koldtoft (UCPH), Julien Westhoff (UCPH), James Veale (BAS), Michaela Mühl (UNIB), Fortunat Joos (UNIB), and Inès Gay (IPEV)

Today we continued processing the core drilled last year – and we have now finished processing 600m to 800m, i.e. the upper part of the brittle zone. We transported 26 boxes containing the ice we had just processed to Concordia for storage in the balloon cave. Half of the boxes are awaiting shipment to Europe, while the other half will stay in Antarctica for future use. We also took the opportunity to transport equipment to LDC that had just been delivered by the traverse from DDU.

About drilling, we are still trying to recover lost plastic pieces and screws from the bottom of the bore hole. After using Arnold yesterday, we tried to drill a core with the classic head (with step cutters), without much success. We then set up a head with conventional cutters, and noticed that the head started to "engage", but after a few seconds we lost contact again. So we decided to set up the motor section of the Danish drill, hoping to get a little more power or torque. Lemmi just finished to machine a modified bearing section, allowing us to connect this Danish motor section to the AWI three meters drill.