A Proposal to Build a Deep Ocean Rock Coring Drill

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The objectives of this oceanographic instrumentation development project are to design, build, and test a modern rock coring drill and establish a facility for its operation. Design criteria require the drill to penetrate and recover three-meter core samples from igneous basement rocks, lithi- fied sediments, and sulfide deposits at ocean depths of up to 5,000 meters. The drill will be deployed from conventional deep-sea research vessels and will collect spatially oriented cores from environments that are difficult or impossible to sample using conventional sediment coring or dredging tech- niques. Areas of specific research applications that would make use of such a capability include sampling of mid-ocean seamounts, drilling carbonate blocks at convergent margins, off-axis sampling of igneous rocks for studies of crustal evolution, and sampling at hydrothermal deposits. The new drilling capability will also be useful in resource assess- ment such as Exclusive Economic Zone mapping efforts off Hawaii. Advances in the field of ocean engineering are also anticipated. Robotic and system control technology must be developed to mark and extract the rock cores with reference to polar coordinates. Control of the drill system must be such that accommodations can be made for differing seafloor conditions and off-vertical placement. This project will also provide the engineering foundation for a planned 50- meter rock coring capability.