Blog

In December, we made a team pilgrimage to the Matrix Drilling Products facility in Lewisburg, Tennessee, to see progress on FRS modifications and conduct some tests of the recently modified screen shaker. Matrix is one of our critical partners in development of RAID's drilling technology. We got...

Our theme this year is “We go deep together”. The deep part has been accomplished! We have drilled deeper and faster in ice to reach bedrock than anytime previously. Our accomplishments this year show that the RAID drilling system can do what we thought it could do. That’s very gratifying. But...

By John Goodge and Jeff Severinghaus. On January 16, 2020, RAID successfully drilled through the glacial ice at Minna Bluff and recovered rock core from beneath the subglacial bed at a depth of 681 m, a new record for deep ice exploration in Antarctica. It was a fantastic day for RAID, and for us...

Contributed by Martha Sortland The question we get most often from friends and family back home is, “how do the bathrooms work out there?” It’s actually quite fascinating, if you’re not squeamish!  Let’s start with urine. In Antarctica, you can’t pee wherever you’d like, due to environmental...

RESTAURANT REVIEW Excerpted from The Daily Raider. This week we stopped in at Minna Cocina, a small but up-and-coming eatery gaining a strong following in the greater McMurdo area. It's certainly off the beaten track, but well worth the drive. In fact, some guests fly in just for the chance to...

I’d like to say that we are on schedule and that everything has gone according to plan! But that is not the reality of drilling in Antarctica when you’re developing an entirely new approach. We’ve had steady downward progress, that much is good, and we’ve passed several key milestones and set new...

In an earlier blog, I briefly introduced the four-person staff at Minna Bluff who run the camp and support our science. Each of them plays a key role in keeping our camp running smoothly, allowing us to focus on field development of the RAID drill. By living and working together 24/7 in close...

Contributed by Martha Sortland Martha. I have a feeling the authors of “The Joy of Cooking” never expected a battered copy of their seminal work to be considered a “must have” in an Antarctic field camp.  Thankfully, we no longer need to survive out here the way the first explorers did over a...

RAID is unlike any other drill. It’s designed to drill deeply and quickly through glacial ice in order to penetrate the oldest ice at the bottom and then drill ahead into bedrock below. Because of the great depths, low temperatures, different media (ice to rock), environmental protection, and...