A scientific mission to study Antarctica’s rapidly melting Thwaites Glacier ended in heartbreak over the weekend, when researchers’ instruments became stranded somewhere within half-mile tract of glacial ice.
According to the New York Times — which embedded with a team of researchers to install instruments beneath the infamous “Doomsday Glacier” — instruments meant to record data on the waters underneath Thwaites only made it about three-quarters of the way to their icy destination.
To create a hole reaching the Antarctic waters, scientists and engineers blasted a borehole around one foot in diameter and about 3,300 feet deep using hot water. Unless the team kept applying hot water, they estimated it would re-freeze in just 48 hours.
Their window of opportunity only lasted the weekend — if the scientists didn’t secure the instruments by Monday, an approaching front of bad weather would prevent helicopters from extracting them, effectively stranding them for an indeterminate period of time.
Despite successfully dipping a set of pilot instruments into the drink before pulling them back out again, their main equipment became entombed in ice before it reached its destination.
Keith Makinson, an oceanographer and drilling engineer told the NYT it was “absolutely gutting.”
“You get your window of opportunity,” he lamented. “You don’t have forever. And you see what you can do.
Still, those pilot instruments were a massive victory on their own. Per the newspaper, the data collected is the first ever recorded from beneath the glacier’s “main trunk,” showing the waters underneath are warm and quick-flowing.
Though it won’t provide one-to-two years of continuous data like the main instruments would have, it’s crucial evidence for scientists racing to discover why the Thwaites is melting much faster than expected. That research has potentially world-shifting implications, because many experts worry that if the glacier collapses, it could devastate coastlines across the planet.
“This is not the end,” the expedition’s chief scientist Won Sang Lee told the NYT. The data confirms that “this is the place to go, whatever challenges there are.”
More on Glaciers: The Sounds of a Dying Glacier Might Make You Cry