July 4, 2023

4th of July

4th of July celebration.

A day working with the bailer and the borehole camera. The idea is to lower the bailer to the bed and release pure coasol as a clean and slightly heavier drill liquid that will stay at the bed. The borehole camera is attached under the bailer and will give good pictures of what is going on at the bed. First we needed to make a mount for the camera under the bailer, then it turned out that the bailer only very slowly would sink down to the bed (with a speed of 8 cm/s is takes 7-8 hours before bedrock is reach).. Writing the daily report, the bailer has reached a depth of 2000 m… Unfortunately, the battery powered camera will be out of memory on the SD card and out of power too before it reaches the bed. So, if this is the case, we will take the borehole camera down tomorrow without the slow bailer. Keep posted.
While waiting the team has celebrated 4th of July with burgers in the beautiful weather. Congratulations Meg and Trevor.

What we did today:

1. Lowered bailer and camera to the bottom of the borehole.
2. Processed small pieces of ice to understand the ice we are drilling right now.
3. Continued digging snow away and installing a support for the entrance to the Dome.
4. Continued to remove snow from the entrance to the trenches.
5. Opened trench to the concert hall with snow blower.
6. Continued to staple black rubber to the outside of the Dome.
7. 4th of July BBQ in the sunny weather outside the Dome. Thanks Chiara.

Weather today: A sunny day with ground fog until the afternoon. Wind between 0 and 8 kt from 240T, temperatures between -15°C and -4°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

The preparation phases of the bailer and the borehole camera.

Working on the Dome, Martin is stapling the rubber to the Dome and Jinhwa and Meg (in the hole) is digging out for the improvement of the Dome entrance.

Sverrir and Meg working under the Dome.