Published December 1, 2022 | Version 1.0.0
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Performance Data of an Ice-Melting Probe from Field Tests in two Different Ice Environments

Authors/Creators

  • 1. FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Aachen, Germany
  • 2. RWTH Aachen University, Methods for Model-based Development in Computational Engineering, Aachen, Germany
  • 3. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Computational Geoscience, Göttingen, Germany

Contributors

  • 1. University of Tennessee, Microbiology, Knoxville, TN, United States
  • 2. University of California, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA, United States
  • 3. University of Alaska Fairbanks, Department of Geosciences, Fairbanks, AK, United States
  • 4. Ohio State University, School of Earth Sciences, Columbus, OH, United States

Description

This dataset was acquired at field tests of the steerable ice-melting probe "EnEx-IceMole" (Dachwald et al., 2014). A field test in summer 2014 was used to test the melting probe's system, before the probe was shipped to Antarctica, where, in international cooperation with the MIDGE project, the objective of a sampling mission in the southern hemisphere summer 2014/2015 was to return a clean englacial sample from the subglacial brine reservoir supplying the Blood Falls at Taylor Glacier (Badgeley et al., 2017, German et al., 2021).

The standardized log-files generated by the IceMole during melting operation include more than 100 operational parameters, housekeeping information, and error states, which are reported to the base station in intervals of 4 s. Occasional packet loss in data transmission resulted in a sparse number of increased sampling intervals, which where compensated for by linear interpolation during post processing. The presented dataset is based on a subset of this data: The penetration distance is calculated based on the ice screw drive encoder signal, providing the rate of rotation, and the screw's thread pitch. The melting speed is calculated from the same data, assuming the rate of rotation to be constant over one sampling interval. The contact force is calculated from the longitudinal screw force, which es measured by strain gauges. The used heating power is calculated from binary states of all heating elements, which can only be either switched on or off. Temperatures are measured at each heating element and averaged for three zones (melting head, side-wall heaters and back-plate heaters).

Notes

We gratefully acknowledge support through the Explorer Initiatives of the DLR Space Administration funded through the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag (50NA1206, 50NA1908, 50NA2009).

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Additional details

References

  • Badgeley, J.A., Pettit, E.C., Carr, C.G., Tulaczyk, S., Mikucki, J.A., Lyons,W.B., 2017. An englacial hydrologic system of brine within a coldglacier: Blood Falls, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Journal ofGlaciology , 1–14. doi:DOI:10.1017/jog.2017.16.
  • Dachwald, B., Mikucki, J., Tulaczyk, S., Digel, I., Espe, C., Feldmann, M.,Francke, G., Kowalski, J., Xu, C., 2014. IceMole: A maneuverable probefor clean in situ analysis and sampling of subsurface ice and subglacialaquatic ecosystems. Annals of Glaciology 55, 14–22. doi:10.3189/2014AoG65A004.
  • German, L., Mikucki, J.A., Welch, S.A., A., W.K., Lutton, A., Dachwald,B., Kowalski, J., Heinen, D., Feldmann, M., Francke, G., Espe, C.,Lyons, W.B., 2021. Validation of sampling antarctic subglacial hyper-saline waters with an electrothermal ice melting probe (icemole) forenvironmental analytical geochemistry. Int. J. Environ. Anal. Chem.101, 2654–2667. doi:10.1080/03067319.2019.1704750.