Lake Vostok drilling in Antarctic ‘running out of time’
With only about 50m left to drill, time is running out for the Russian scientists hoping to drill into Vostok - the world’s most enigmatic lake.
Vostok is a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica, hidden some 4,000m (13,000ft) beneath the ice sheet.
With the Antarctic summer almost over, temperatures will soon begin to plummet; they can go as low as -80C.
Scientists will leave the remote base on 6 February, when conditions are still mild enough for a plane to land.
The team has been drilling non-stop for weeks.
“It’s like working on an alien planet where no one has been before,” Valery Lukin, the deputy head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St Petersburg, which oversees the project, told BBC News.