July 12, 2017

Rover on the run!

Andrew and Vasileios have almost caught up with the autonomous rover some 8 km SE of camp.

Today Andrew made several test of the autonomous rover. First he made it drive in a triangular pattern north of camp, which the rover completed successfully. To further test its range it was then send on a path away from EGRIP camp. To our astonishment the battery-powered rover just went on and on, and at a range of 4.9 km we lost it from our movement detecting surveillance radar – was this the end of its range? This turned out not to be the case. Hence, Andrew, Vasileios and Karl-Emil went on Skidoo to intercept the little escapee, and found it still happily moving along some 8 km SE from camp. All in all the rover had been driving for more than 20 km without a recharge – very impressive!
In the drill trench and logging cabin the mood was more downbeat, the issue with floating core sections has reappeared with a vengeance, and our luck retrieving the pieces intact had clearly run out. A total of about 40 cm of rubble, distributed over three core-breaks was the sad result, with several more sections of ice cores consisting of more pieces than we like. As we finally seemed to get the core breaks back in a better mode the drilling software decided to crash completely and operations had to be terminated for the day – we all hope that tomorrow will mark the return of operations normal, with much less excitement and much more routine work.
On the surface grooming of skiway continued, as did the surface science program. Furthermore Basile, Nora and Diana worked long hours to complete core A3-17. In the science trench physical properties measurements continued, and here the loggers at least found some happy caretakers for a piece from the one of the rubble sections – it felt good that even a piece from the rubble could be used for interesting science.

What we did today:

1. Grooming of skiway.
2. Deep drilling core length at 19.00: 12.18 m.
3. Logging depth at 19.00: 650.67 m.
4. Water vapour, methane, aerosols, snow and boundary layer measurements
5. Physical properties measurements.
6. Finished the drilling of auger core A3-17 at 14.38 m.
7. Driving autonomous vehicle in pattern north of camp and away from camp towards SE.
8. Water isotope sampling for sublimation studies.

Weather: Sunny day. Wind turned from W to SW during the day, up to 4 m/s. Temperature between -19°C and -8°C.

FL, Bo Vinther