Collaborative Research: Development of a rapid access ice drilling (RAID) platform for research in Antarctica

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Intellectual Merit: The PIs propose to design and build a new mobile drilling platform for use on Antarctic ice sheets. This new Rapid Access Ice Drilling system (RAID) will enable rapid access to deep ice (up to 3300 m depth), followed by coring of the ice-sheet bed interface and bedrock substrate below. RAID will provide a new tool to obtain in situ measurements as well as samples of ice, glacial bed, and rock for interdisciplinary studies. RAID will be mobile, logistically autonomous, and capable of drilling to deep ice within a few days. Once a borehole is created, down-hole logging, drilling of short ice and rock cores, and other sampling can follow. Holes can be kept open for several years to facilitate re-entry. The drill is being designed so that several holes may be completed per field season. Once built, the drilling system will be established as an NSF-sponsored facility. RAID will provide an interdisciplinary capability to study lithospheric composition, heat flow, ice-sheet dynamics, climate history and atmospheric greenhouse gas composition over the past 1.5 million years, paleothermometry, extremophile organisms, and particle physics.Broader impacts: RAID will enable scientists to address critical questions about the deep interface between the Antarctic ice sheets and the substrate below and address many of the unknowns associated with general stability of the Antarctic ice sheets in the face of changing climate. Once developed, RAID will help train students in scientific drilling operations.