Lake Vostok is a subglacial lake in Antarctica, the largest of at least 140. Its water is extremely old, and it has been called “the most pristine lake on Earth.” The lake has a temperature of -3°C and is supersaturated with oxygen. Scientists suspect that it may contain microbial life, which would need special adaptations to survive in such an oxygen-rich environment. Plans are underway to deploy a cryobot to explore the lake.
Lake Vostok is a remote subglacial lake in Antarctica. Located using ice-penetrating radar, Lake Vostok lies more than two miles (4000 m, 13,000 feet) below the Central Antarctic Ice Sheet, just a few hundred miles from the South Pole. Like other lakes, it is composed of fresh water and also contains a small island. It is 50 km wide and 250 km long at its widest, comparable in size to Lake Ontario. Lake Vostok is the largest of at least 140 subglacial lakes in Antarctica.
Scientists estimate that Lake Vostok has been sealed under the Antarctic ice sheet for 500,000 to over a million years. Its water is therefore extremely old, unlike typical lakes, where the water is continuously recycled and each individual water molecule only resides in the lake for about six years. Lake Vostok has been called “the most pristine lake on Earth”.
Lake Vostok has an estimated temperature of -3°C, a few degrees below zero, but remains liquid due to the immense pressure of the ice above it. Lake Vostok is also known to be a supersaturated oxygen environment, with oxygen levels 50 times higher than typical surface lakes. If the lake contains microbial life, as suspected, it would need special adaptations to survive in such an oxygen-rich environment. It would also have a gene pool isolated for over a million years, a tantalizing possibility for biologists. The discovery of life in Lake Vostok would also provide evidence for the hypothesis that life could survive in the subglacial oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
In 1998, an international team of scientists working at Russia’s Vostok station, just above the lake, produced one of the longest ice cores in the world. They stopped drilling just 300 feet (120 m) above the suspected boundary between the lake water and the glacier above it. This was to prevent the 50-ton column of freon and aviation fuel used to keep the well from freezing from contaminating the lake, but also to protect the scientists drilling from a catastrophic explosion caused by the release of pressure. Lake Vostok is under such high pressure that a hole could produce a geyser hundreds of feet high, destroying any surface research stations and contaminating the lake with surface microbes.
Plans are underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop and deploy a cryobot, an autonomous robot whose purpose would be to melt into ice, deploying a power and communication cable as it goes, then deploying a hydrobot once it reaches the lake, look for it For the life.
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