Proposal for penetration and exploration of sub-glacial Lake Vostok, Antarctica

According to directions issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Russia to the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute and St. Petersburg Mining Institute, a new project has been launched with the aim to develop technology for the ecologically safe in situ exploration of sub-glacial Lake Vostok (Antarctica). In this paper we propose our current approaches to accessing the lake and sampling its water using the deep Hole 5G-l at Vostok Station. It is proposed that by maintaining the hydrostatic pressure at the hole bottom slightly lower than pressure of the overburden ice it would be possible to allow lake water to enter the hole and to freeze in it at a certain distance from the bottom after the drill reaches the ice-lake water interface. Then the re-frozen ice in the bottom part of the hole could be cored again in order to obtain lake water samples. The new thermal drill TBPO-132 and drilling operations which are necessary for the proposed method realization, are described.