News

An international team has drilled the longest-ever sediment core from under an ice sheet, providing a record stretching back millions of years.

We’ve completed drilling at Crary Ice Rise with a whopping 228 metres of sediment core, exceeding our target of 200 metres!

Third time’s a charm - we have successfully drilled 200 metres of sediment core from beneath the ice sheet at Crary Ice Rise!

The team had to pause to relevel the Antarctic Intermediate Depth Drill rig. 

We’ve passed a huge milestone – we’ve now retrieved more than 100 metres of sediment core, so we are over halfway towards our target of 200 metres. 

Today a storm swept through the camp, with high winds of 35 kts gusting to 45 kts blowing snow and poor visibility for many hours.

After several days of constant core coming up, our drillers had a challenge down the hole, so they had to pull out the drill pipe, sort the issue, and run…

The third and final group of our on-ice team have made it to Crary Ice Rise – later than planned due to the weather challenges we’ve battled with this year.

We have successfully retrieved sediment core from beneath 523 m of ice at Crary Ice Rise, rotary coring with our custom-designed Antarctic Intermediate Depth Drill.

We’ve risen to the Antarctic drilling challenge – our riser is in, connecting the ‘Big Rig’ at the surface of the ice to the bedrock 523m below.