June 12, 2023

First drilling attempt with the Hans Tausen drill

Grant and Søren preparing the drill for deployment.

Today the first attempts of drilling with the Hans-Tausen (H-T) drill were carried out. The H-T drill is a shorter version of the long drill that can drill ice cores of up to 1.5 m length. The drill was first deployed for the drilling of an ice core from the Hans-Tausen ice cap in Northern Greenland in 1995 – hence the name. In a potential shear zone, it seems wise to use a shorter drill, and the reduced core barrel length is probably not going to lower the production significantly, since we anyway appear not to be able to drill long cores in the warm ice. Today’s two runs with the H-T drill resulted in two short cores and a subsequent run with the long drill gave another short core. Indeed, we have reached a point where the drilling is no longer progressing with 10+ meters a day.

What we did today:

1. Drilled two short cores with HT drill and one short core with long drill.
2. Logging depth: 2611.58 m. Processing depth: 2610.85 m.
3. Physical properties measurement 2608.65 m.
4. Confirmed that acoustic liquid level detector results agree with drill detection.
5. Worked on drill communication with surface unit.
6. Celebrated birthday of Ashish with rice & curry, chapatis, cake and song.

Weather today: Mostly overcast, high winds, snow drift and high temperatures. Temperatures -22°C to -8°C. Wind 2-20 kt from SW.

FL, Anders Svensson

In the drillers workshop, the lathe is applied to reduce the outer side of two out of three cutters on the drill head. This will reduce the contact surface to the ice and maybe reduce the risk of getting stuck.

Glycol pellets are prepared in the freezer in the drill trench, in case the drill does anyway get stuck.