May 18, 2007 — One of the most mysterious, fragile and increasingly important ecosystems on Earth may finally be visited by scientists, thanks to a new National Academies of Science (NAS) report.
Scientists from several countries including the United States have long desired to drill through the thick ice and into Antarctica's 100-mile-long Lake Vostok and find out the secrets of what might live there in the most isolated ecosystem on the planet.
But recent discoveries suggest it could also reveal clues to how sea levels might change with global warming and even serve as a dry run for someday drilling into the ice-covered seas of Jupiter's moon Europa.
The trouble is that drilling through the ice into Vostok and more than 140 smaller subglacial lakes is no easy task — it carries the risk of contaminating or otherwise damaging pristine environments. So exactly how to responsibly study the lakes has been a matter of controversy among scientists.
"No lake has been penetrated yet," said Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt at Texas A&M University, one of the top U.S. scientists working on the matter. The reason is that scientists wanted to be certain they had independent review and approval for such delicate work by the broader scientific community, he said.
That approval came in the form of the just-released NAS report, entitled "Exploration of Antarctic Subglacial Aquatic Environments: Environmental and Scientific Stewardship."
"I think this will open the door to proposing drilling into sub-ice environments," Kennicutt told Discovery News.
