China will drill a subglacial lake in Antarctica. The project has been included in the national key research and development plan.

The reporter learned from the China Polar Research Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources that my country will drill a subglacial lake in Antarctica. During China's 40th Antarctic expedition, which is currently underway, inland expedition members have successfully conducted field exploration.

According to Jiang Su, a researcher at the Polar Ice, Snow and Climate Change Institute of the China Polar Research Center, this subglacial lake is located in the Princess Elizabeth Land area of ​​the East Antarctic inland ice sheet. It is buried more than 3,600 meters beneath the ice sheet and is 120 kilometers away from China's Antarctic Taishan Station. In 2022, our country officially named this subglacial lake that resembles a "Qilin Lying Quietly" as the "Qilin Subglacial Lake", and it has now been included by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

According to reports, during China's 40th Antarctic expedition, the Antarctic inland expedition team conducted on-site exploration based on the safe route in and out of the lake area selected by my country's high-resolution satellite remote sensing images, successfully entered the Kirin subglacial lake area for the first time, and carried out a number of subglacial lake drilling site surveys to make preliminary preparations for subsequent scientific drilling of subglacial lakes.

At present, my country's "Princess Elizabeth Land Subglacial Lake and Subglacial Life Detection Project in Antarctica" has been included in the national key research and development plan. The China Polar Research Center will work closely with China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Jilin University and other scientific research institutions to officially launch the scientific drilling project of the Antarctic Kirin subglacial lake based on breakthroughs in many key technologies such as clean and recyclable drilling of 3,000-meter-level subglacial lakes, in-situ detection and clean sampling, on-site processing of microbial samples in low-temperature environments, monitoring of microbial contamination during drilling, and drilling support support.