China's 42nd Antarctic expedition team set sail from Shanghai on Saturday, kicking off a bold mission to probe deep beneath the polar ice sheet.
"During this expedition, China plans, for the first time, to conduct scientific drilling experiments in lakes deep in the Antarctic inland ice sheet," says expedition chief Wei Fuhai. Using domestically built hot-water and thermal-melting drills, the team will carry out clean drilling and sampling through ice more than 3,000 meters thick.
Subglacial lakes under the vast ice sheet exist in extreme conditions—high pressure, darkness and near-zero nutrients—yet they preserve a unique record of Earth's climate history and microbial evolution. Exploring these hidden ecosystems could unlock clues about sedimentary processes and life's survival at the planet's frozen extremes.
"Continuously enhancing our ability to understand, protect and utilize Antarctica is not only an inevitable requirement for China to build itself into a strong maritime nation, but also a way to make new contributions to promoting the building of a community with a shared future for humanity," says Long Wei of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration.
On the power front, the newly opened Qinling Station has pioneered a wind-solar-hydrogen storage hybrid system, cutting fossil fuel consumption by over 100 tonnes a year. Even during polar night, the station can run on stored green power for up to 2.5 hours.
The station's warehouse pairs polar robots with an AI-driven platform to enable unmanned management, boosting material handling efficiency by 40 percent. In the field, the expedition will also test the domestically developed Snow Leopard 6×6 wheeled vehicle and the THT550 high-power, fully hydraulic towing equipment.
More than 500 members from over 80 institutions on the Chinese mainland are joined by researchers from Thailand, Chile, Portugal and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, reflecting a spirit of international scientific collaboration. The mission is expected to conclude by May 2026 before the team sails home.
Reference(s):
China kicks off 42nd Antarctic expedition with new drilling equipment
cgtn.com
