Attempt to Drill Through Thwaites Glacier Is Foiled

A joint British and South Korean team attempting to install instruments beneath the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica was forced to abandon the mooring after the cable and equipment became stuck partway through a half‑mile‑thick borehole, trapping the instruments in the ice.

The researchers had melted a roughly one‑foot‑diameter hole about 3,300 feet deep with an 80°C hot‑water drill and worked against a roughly 48‑hour refreeze window and an approaching weather window for helicopter evacuations. The operation encountered delays from high winds, crevasses, a faulty depth gauge and a hose that became stuck while being withdrawn; the final mooring cable appeared to jam when a heavy chain failed to pass through a refreezing section of the hole.

The team did recover preliminary measurements from probes that were lowered and retrieved earlier in the operation, the first data from beneath Thwaites’s fast‑moving main trunk.

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