A wonderful landmark achievement at NEEM

Film night in NEEM main dome.

Today has been a fine day not only weather wise but for the project. Drilling went fine with a production of almost 30 m, and at the same time the ice core analysis and processing line also reached almost 30 m processed ice in one day.
We are now running at the nominal rate of ice core drilling and production that this camp has been designed for, and what we had hoped for to achieve. Of course will there be setbacks on some days in the future, but there is also capacity for even higher daily production to compensate, and the drillers have not even gone into two shift drilling. It was a fine work indeed, and I congratulated the entire team at my daily speech at dinner time.

What we have done today:

1. Drilling with the NEEM long drill.
2. Logging. Last bag: 626. Depth: 344.30 m.
3. Processing 29.7 m ice cores. Processed depth: 156.20 m
4. Pit studies 200 m south of camp. Snow chemistry (Anna W.).
5. Most pallets with drill fluid moved to new cargo line.
6. Repaired Flexmobil. The vehicle is now running nicely.
7. Begun construction of new cooling snow tunnel.

Ad.1: This is how the drillers report looks today:
“Using the set up from yesterday resulted in most stable drilling. Holding slightly back on the pitch results in more uniform chips storage in the chips chamber and even longer cores. Max run length 3.55 m.
We drilled 27.35 m in 8 runs; drillers depth 335.11 m.”

Weather: Fine all day. -23 °C to -10 °C, 5-8 knots mainly from S.
Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen