Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2022/23
Situation Report #14, 16 December 2022
Rob after putting the first core of the season into the buffer. 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
Camp at LDC is permanently in progress. While we are drilling, logging and tuning the instruments, Saverio, Andrea and Michele maintain and improve the Camp. There is a lot of work to do, but most of the time they are also very helpful in ice coring activities. We all strongly appreciate the terrific work they are doing.
What we did today:
- 6 runs in total: first 2.06 m; second 1.30 m; switched to EGRIP set-up with pump, same head with staggered cutters; third 2.73 m; fourth 2.64 m; fifth 2.50 m; sixth 1.69 m; 3rd & 4th pumping from about 12 m above bottom of the hole - full & hard packed chips chamber; run time increasing towards the later runs
- mounted EGRIP drill
- built glove box
- repaired spirals of core barrel
- 3D print of booster for shaft
- DEP, Swiss sawed and archived 18 m of core at DC
- recovered GPS receivers from stations N0 and S0
- radiation monitors placed in near-surface snow
- daily photogrammetry carried out
- a blocked FED was dismantled and rebuilt
- Drillers depth: 179.84 m
- Delta D: 12.94 m
- Loggers depth; 185.93 m
- Delta D: 12.79 m
Frank Wilhelms & Rob Mulvaney - LDC, 16.12.2022