A Hydromechanical Drilling System for Obtaining Rock and Sediment Samples from Under Deep Glacier Ice

California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Kamb- 0085245 This award supports the development of a new core-drilling system for obtaining samples of bedrock and glacial sediment from beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet, with applicability to arctic glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet. Such samples are needed for a wide variety of investigations of antarctic and arctic geology, geochemistry, glaciology and geobiology. Examples are studies of sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the West Antarctic rift system, studies of the fast-moving West Antarctic ice streams, and microbiological studies of life under the extreme conditions at the basal ice-bedrock contact. The core-drilling capability will make it possible to carry out such investigations over the 98% of the Antarctic continent that is covered by the ice sheet and thus has been inaccessible for sampling up to now. The system involves the coupling of two proven drilling technologies that are both based on a source of high-pressure water: 1) hot-water jet drilling to drill rapidly through the ice, and 2) hydromechanical rotary drilling to drill into the underlying sediments or bedrock.