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The Royal Society, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2059(374), p. 20140304, 2016

DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0304

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Clean subglacial access: prospects for future deep hot-water drilling

Journal article published in 2015 by Keith Makinson ORCID, David Pearce, Dominic A. Hodgson, Michael J. Bentley ORCID, Andrew M. Smith, Martyn Tranter ORCID, Mike Rose, Neil Ross, Matt Mowlem, John Parnell, Martin J. Siegert ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Accessing and sampling subglacial environments deep beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet presents several challenges to existing drilling technologies. With over half of the ice sheet believed to be resting on a wet bed, drilling down to this environment must conform to international agreements on environmental stewardship and protection, making clean hot-water drilling the most viable option. Such a drill, and its water recovery system, must be capable of accessing significantly greater ice depths than previous hot-water drills, and remain fully operational after connecting with the basal hydrological system. The Subglacial Lake Ellsworth (SLE) project developed a comprehensive plan for deep (greater than 3000 m) subglacial lake research, involving the design and development of a clean deep-ice hot-water drill. However, during fieldwork in December 2012 drilling was halted after a succession of equipment issues culminated in a failure to link with a subsurface cavity and abandonment of the access holes. The lessons learned from this experience are presented here. Combining knowledge gained from these lessons with experience from other hot-water drilling programmes, and recent field testing, we describe the most viable technical options and operational procedures for future clean entry into SLE and other deep subglacial access targets.