Lake E Daily News April 10, 2009
The night shift over Thursday night worked to thaw a hose to the submersible water pump and the pump itself, and then mixed mud in preparation for drilling. Frozen hoses became a problem more than once but was eventually mitigated. The shift drilled to 200.16 m and recovered only a short core at about 50% recovery due to torque problems.
The day at Lake E started out with some educational outreach. Tim Martin, middle school Earth Science teacher from Greensboro Day School, North Carolina, is participating in a portion of the Lake E field operations are part of the US NSF Polar TREC Program (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating). Tim is learning about all aspects of the project providing summaries of everything from the Drilling operations and science planning to camp life and observations about the El'gygytgyn crater. Today with the assistance of ARCUS in Fairbanks, Alaska, Tim and PI Julie BG held an "webinar" that included an short on-line power point presentation and question and answers over the iridium phone. More than 200 children from the 4th grade to high school age logged in along with teachers and others from across the country. Questions came in from kids in Virginia as well as California about all aspects of the Lake E project.
The day shift continued drilling to 213 meters depth with a few intervals of fine muds but were back into sand and slow going. But we are making progress and playing it safe so we don't lose the hole.
Cheers from the Lake...Julie BG
