Left: Tense moment in the drillers cabin today, as the drill lost power and was stuck. Right: The torn wire was easy to spot in the skate section after the drill was surfaced.
May 27, 2024
Left: Tense moment in the drillers cabin today, as the drill lost power and was stuck. Right: The torn wire was easy to spot in the skate section after the drill was surfaced.
Exciting moments can of course be both good and bad. And here at EGRIP we definitely had both yesterday! Before noon we were all very excited about the successful results from the Cryo-egg. Mike reported that he was able to receive data transmissions from the egg from a depth of 2.5km below the surface. An impressive and very exciting accomplishment, that holds a lot of promise for future applications of the Cryo-egg for scientific studies of the water channels below and within ice sheets and glaciers.
In the drill trench the later afternoon also proved very exciting, but in a much more tense way. With the Cryo-egg out of the bore hole the drillers decided it was time to test out our new deviation drilling tools. The idea being, that we want to be able to drill out of the wall of the old bore hole and start up a new one, at a depth of our choosing.
First step in the process is to broach a groove in the bore hole wall, but after doing so, the drill lost power, making it unable to retract the groove cutting blade from its side. This meant the drill was stuck at 150m depth in our deep bore hole, basically blocking all access to anything below! As it turned out the emergency plan of simply pulling up the drill, by extending the groove all the way to the casing, worked out. Anyhow, the drillers are now considering adding another level of mechanical protection against getting the blade stuck.
On the surface Sverrir and Sepp continued their efforts to excavate and level out camp, this time the last buried fuel tank was brought to the surface, as was the windsock next to the skiway. David continued the work on readying the white tent for intermediate drilling, by getting the ice core logging area set up, while Susanne was preparing plastic bags for the intermediate core.
What we did today:
Weather today: Sunny and temp. from -22°C to -12°C. Wind: Up to 22 kts from WSW around noon, decreasing to 5kt and turning SSW. Visibility: Unrestricted.