HR: 13:40h
AN: C33B-01 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: An In-Situ Deep-UV Optical Probe for Examining Biochemical Presence in Deep Glaciers and Sub-Glacial Lakes
AU: * Lane, A L
EM: arthur.l.lane@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Inst. of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, United States
AU: Behar, A
EM: Alberto.Behar@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Inst. of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, United States
AU: Bhartia, R
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Inst. of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, United States
AU: Conrad, P G
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Inst. of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, United States
AU: Hug, W F
EM: W.Hug@photonsystems.com
AF: Photon Systems, Inc., 1512 Industrial Park Street, Covina, CA 91722,
AB: The quest to study and understand extremophiles has led to many quite different research paths in the past 30 years. One of the more difficult directions has been the study of biochemical material in deep glacial ice and in subglacial lakes. Lake Vostok in Eastern Antarctica has been perhaps the most discussed subglacial lake because of its large size (~14,000 sq km), deep location under >3700 m of overlying ice, and thick sediment bed (~200m). Once the physical conditions of the Lake were assessed, questions immediately arose about the potential existence of biological material - either extinct or possibly extant under conditions of extremely limited energy and nutrients [1-2]. To investigate the biology of Vostok, via in-situ methods, is a major issue that awaits proven techniques that will not contaminate the Lake beyond what may have occurred to date. Lake Ellsworth, in West Antarctica, also discovered by ice penetrating radar, is of significantly smaller size, but is also >3500 m below the overlying ice. It represents a wonderful opportunity to design, engineer and build in-situ delivery systems that consider bio-cleanliness approaches to enable examination of its water, sediment bed and the "roof" area accretion ice for biochemicals [3]. Our laboratory has been developing deep UV fluorescence and UV Raman instrumentation to locate and classify organic material at a variety of extremophile locations. The confluence of the measurement techniques and the engineering for high external pressure instrument shells has enabled us to design and begin prototype fabrication of a biochemical sensing probe that can be inserted into a hot-water drilled ice borehole, functioning as a local area mapper in water environments as deep as 6000 m. Real-time command and control is conducted from a surface science station. We have been using the deep Vostok ice cores at the U.S. National Ice Core Lab to validate our science and data analysis approaches with an "inverted" system that has recently generated spatially resolved spectral images of material inside the Vostok cores without extraction or disturbance to the material in the ice. We will describe the instrumentation we will have available for the British Antarctica Survey Lake Ellsworth Exploration field campaign, provide a possible operational scenario and show examples of the kinds of possible measurement results that might be obtained, based upon our Lake Vostok core studies. [1] Siegert, M.J., Tranter, M., Ellis-Evans, C.J., Priscu, J.C. & Lyons, W.B. (2003) The hydrochemistry of Lake Vostok and the potential for life in Antarctic subglacial lakes. Hydrological Processes, 17, 795-814. [2] Priscu, J.C. and B.C. Christner (2004). Earth's icy biosphere, pp. 130-145, In "Microbial Diversity and Bioprospecting", A. Bull (editor). Chap 13. ASM Press, Washington, D.C. [3] Siegert M.J., Hindmarsh, R., Corr H., Smith, A., Woodward, J., King, E., Payne, A.J., and Joughin, I.(2004) Subglacial Lake Ellsworth: a candidate for in situ exploration in West Antarctica. Geophysical Research Letters, 31 (23), L23403, 10.1029/2004GL021477.
DE: 0724 Ice cores (4932)
DE: 0746 Lakes (9345)
DE: 0794 Instruments and techniques
DE: 5200 PLANETARY SCIENCES: ASTROBIOLOGY
DE: 6221 Europa
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting