July 12, 2018

Good news and bad news

Jan J readying another electronics section for the deep drill. Note that it is just past midnight despite the daylight illuminating the workbench!

Today was an eventful day, both at the RADIX site and in the EGRIP drill trench. At RADIX the drill for the first time made significant progress below the casing, drilling down through some 20 m of ice – very good news indeed. In the EGRIP trench the day started in similar good fashion with a few nice ice cores being drilled after yesterday’s bore hole cleaning effort. However, as the day progressed, it got increasingly clear that chips loss again impeded the drilling and in the late afternoon the drill electronics stop functioning. Efforts to repair and replace the electronics section continued into the night, with Jan J busy at his work bench past midnight (see today’s picture). Hopefully we will be able to commence the drilling operation tomorrow morning.
The crews in the processing line the isotope CFA lab. and the Physical Properties labs. all continued making good progress during the day, cutting and measuring samples at a steady pace. Now all teams are working on various deep parts of this year’s brittle ice section, which seems nice and easy to handle after a few weeks rest in the core buffer.
Preparations for the next flight period continues with grooming of the skiway during some of the night, and documentation, boxing and palletisation of cargo.

What we did today:

1. Drilling of 9.6 m of ice core. Testing and repair of drill electronics.
2. Logging of main core, depth at 19.00: 1407.87 m.
3. Processing in the science trench of brittle ice 1081.30 to 1099.45 m.
4. Measurements in isotope laboratory to 1163.80 m.
5. Measurements in physical properties laboratory of volume samples and brittle ice down to 1080.75 m.
6. Water vapour sampling and measuring.
7. Japanese snow crystal and surface monitoring.
8. Drilling 20+ m of ice below the casing at the RADIX site.
9. Grooming of skiway, inspection of flags, readying of retro cargo.

Weather: Sunny most of the day, with few clouds. Temperature -18 C to -8 C. Wind between SW and W up to 13kt.

FL, Bo Vinther