Keith’s update: Dale Andersen sent an update overnight update to me: “First night at Untersee. All is well after yesterday’s traverse. Now it’s time to get shelter in place – home for the next six weeks”
After a routine traverse on 5 November along the standard route from Ultima Airbase, Dale Andersen and his team arrived at their base camp location at Lake Untersee, Antarctica. Dale sent me a note via satellite saying “Arrived at Untersee after a 5 1/2 hr traverse earlier today. It will take a few days to get the camp pulled together and shelter and safety always come first! More soon!”
Dale and his team now begin the process of setting up their tents and other equipment for the next month of research at Lake Untersee. They got two of their Heimplanet tents up for their first night Dale has been working with Heimplanet to improve the design of these tents in real (off)world conditions. These tents have also been front an center in an episode of Star Trek (see “That Time Star Trek Tents Were Actually Used In Antarctica“)
Lake Untersee, Antarctica and surrounding features – NASA/Google Earth
According to Dale’s 16 October 2026 Field Season Preview:
“The Fall 2026 field season’s joint investigations center on recovering sediment cores, 2 to 3 m long, from Lake Untersee for dating and geochemical analysis. Hopefully there will aso be samples collected from local moraines to pin down glacial movement more precisely over time.
As for Lake Untersee itself, radiocarbon alone cannot give a reliable chronology of the lake’s sediments and when they were deposited (old mat layers). Melting glacial ice releases ancient CO2 into the lake, and the perennial ice cover limits exchange with the modern atmosphere, so the dissolved inorganic carbon is depleted in 14C. …
… We will have two postdocs and a PhD student this year. The other two are from Birgit Sattler’s lab, University of Innsbruck. One of the postdocs, Jessica Todd, is from Caltech and working with me, our ROV maybe with diving operations.”
Closeup of the region surrounding Dale’s base camp on the shore of Lake Untersee, Antarctica — Google Earth
You can see all of the status reports and related articles from this field season and past seasons here at Dale Andersen’s Field Reports
Astrobiology, Exploration, Antarctica,
