Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2022/23
Situation Report #23; Sunday 25 December 2022
Lemmi prepares the hollow shafts for the long AWI drill which has a 4 m long core barrel. (Photo: Mulvaney, Leica SL2, 24mm, 1/16000, f4.211, ISO800). Credit: Mulvaney©PNRA/IPEV
Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Frank Wilhelms (AWI, Chief Driller), Robert Mulvaney (BAS, Chief Scientist), Giuditta Celli (UNIVE, ISP), Romily Harris Stuart (LSCE), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Gunther Lawer (AWI), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Martin Leonhardt (AWI), Michele Scalet (ENEA), Julian Westhoff (NBI), Andrea de Vito (ENEA), Markus Grimmer (UNIBE), Florian Krauss (UNIBE)
Personnel @DC: --
Weather at LDC 5 pm: cloudy with sunny intervals, 3 knots
Meteo at DC 5 pm: probably cold
Christmas Day: a time for recovery in the morning, followed by re-commencing drilling in shifts at 14.30.
A slow morning after the night before… After a lunch taken by all the camp together, drilling began again with the late shift taking the first runs on the drill. By the end of the day (i.e. at midnight) we had completed seven runs of the drill for a Christmas Day total of around 19 meters of core.
Meanwhile, the AWI engineers were busy preparing the components (outer barrel, hollow shaft, pump plus booster pumps, core barrel) for the new AWI 4-meter core barrel system. We intend to start using this system within the next days, with the hope that we will be able to recover longer cores on each drop of the drill.
End of day statistics:
Individual runs of the drill were recorded as: 2.61, 3.17, 2.80, 2.70, 3.04, 3.18, 2.16 m
- Drillers’ depth: 329.42 m; daily total 19.08 m
- Loggers’ depth: 334.40 m; daily total 18.92 m
- Processors’ depth: 128.0 m; daily total 0.0 m
Rob Mulvaney & Frank Wilhelms - LDC, 27.12.2022