Dale Andersen's Field Reports

Dale Andersen’s Astrobiology Antarctic Status Report: 1 November 2024: Drilling Dive Holes Through The Ice

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

Dale Andersen

November 1, 2024

Filed under Analog, Antarctica, Away Team, Dale Andersen, exobiology, expedition, extremophile, Lake Untersee, Limnology, Microbial mat, Novo Station, Novolazarevskaya Station, ROV

Dale Andersen’s Astrobiology Antarctic Status Report: 1 November 2024: Drilling Dive Holes Through The Ice — Base Camp Infrastructure on the ice at Lake Untersee, Antarctica — Dale Andersen

Keith’s note: Astrobiologist Dale Andersen is back in Antarctica at Lake Untersee for another field season of Research (preview) Dale’s work is coordinated through the SETI Institute. We’ll be posting his updates here. You can read about his prior exploits here.

Hi All,

Yesterday’s calm weather allowed us to set up the last WeatherPort for the dive hut and pitch another Heimplanet tent, gradually expanding our camp. With gear getting unpacked and organized, we’re just starting to strike a balance between daily logistics and diving into our science-driven field work.

Today, for example, we’ll make another water run. We have a hole drilled through the 3.6-meter-thick ice about 50 meters from camp. The top of the hole needs a little chipping out to get to the water, but the hole will stay usable for another week or so before it begins to freeze in and we have to re-drill it.

Once open, we fill three 5-gallon Igloo coolers that hold our water supply — the coolers slow/prevent the water from freezing in our cook tent, providing us with a few days’ supply for cooking and drinking.

This morning (Friday, Nov 1) around 5 a.m., we faced gusty winds, blowing snow, and low clouds, but things have settled enough for us to head to the south basin and drill our first sampling hole. Dan Fillion, a PhD candidate from ISMER-UQAR, Quebec, Canada, is set to start his second field season of sampling here.

In the south basin, intense winds increase ice ablation, so the ice is thinner in this area of the lake—around 2.5 meters compared to 3.6-4 meters elsewhere. Drilling through the ice on this side of the lake takes much less time which is a bonus given the hard, gusty winds that are ever present.

Our camp is steadily taking shape, and as logistics fall into place, we’re easing into the science—finding a rhythm that keeps us warm, safe, and progressing each day.

Dale

Keith: Dale and I have been proving research updates – from Antarctica – since 1996. We think we actually had the first webserver (located in my old condo) updated from Antarctica. More details here: Dale Andersen’s 1996 Antarctic Field Research Photo Albums

Astrobiology

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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