Today the drillers trained new drillers; Chantal and Anders operated the drill while trying to create an opening in the fiberglass shards downhole. Later, the drillers removed all sensitive parts of the drill (the second antitorque and the motor section) and mounted five deadweights to the antitorque. This gave the drill a weight of 340kg. Additionally, we added spikes (sharpened threaded rods) to pick up any loose pieces to the bottom of the drill. Then we sent the drill full speed into the plug at 55.6m depth. Result: nothing. The plug did not move a single centimeter and we did not pick up anything. At the dome, all cables between the 78 solar panels mounted on the dome were connected to the 1.5 tons battery pack in the Viessmann cabin next to the dome. Between the two structures, the cables are neatly placed in a snow tunnel not to be in the way. All batteries were quickly charged on this sunny day and the batteries are now powering up the heaters in all Weather ports. Thank you to Carsten and Jørgen for working very focused to set all of this up in just a weeks’ time. Thank you also to Charlotte, Rahul, Jonathan and all of the others who helped out to slowly turn GRIP into a green camp! At the PFAS site, the PFAS and AWI teams joined forces with the shallow drill to produce a 30m long ice core that was sampled on site. On the skiway, Sune was grooming all day to prepare for tomorrows scheduled Skier mission.
What we did this Thursday:
- Using brutal force to attack the borehole plug at 55.6 m depth
- Finishing and successfully testing the GRIP solar power installation
- Shallow drilling at PFAS site to 30m depth
- Grooming skiway and preparing pallets for tomorrows flight
- Redistributing fuel between tanks to make room for receiving more
Weather: Finally, a sunny day! Temp. from -18C to -15C. Wind 2-11 kts from W.
FL, Anders Svensson
