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After drilling for two decades through more than three kilometers of Antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years.

Scientists are excited about what life forms might be found there but are equally worried about contaminating the lake with drilling fluids and bacteria, and the potentially explosive “de-gassing” of a body of water that has especially high concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen.

To prevent a sudden release of gas, the Russian team will not push the drill far into the lake but just deep enough for a limited amount of water (or the slushy ice on the lake’s surface) to flow up the borehole, where it will then freeze.

Reaching Lake Vostok would represent the first direct contact with what scientists now know is a web of more than 200 subglacial lakes in Antarctica; some of which existed when the continent was connected to Australia and was much warmer. They stay liquid because of heat from the core of the planet.

“This is a huge moment for science and exploration, breaking through to this enormous lake that we didn’t even know existed until the 1990s,” said John Priscu, a researcher at Montana State University who has long been involved in antarctic research, including a study of Vostok ice cores.

“If it goes well, a breakthrough opens up a whole new chapter in our understanding of our planet and possibly moons in our solar system and planets far beyond,” he said. “If it doesn’t go well, it casts a pall over the whole effort to explore this wet underside of Antarctica.”

Priscu said Russian scientists on the scene e-mailed him last week to say they had stopped drilling about 12 meters from the expected waterline to measure the pressure levels deep below. He said he expected they were also sending down a special “hot water” drill to make the final push, but a message from the Russian team on Monday reported “no news.”

If the Russians break through as planned within the next week, it will cap more than 50 years of research in what are considered the harshest conditions in the world, where the surface temperatures drop to minus 37 degrees Celsius.

That extreme cold is likely to return within a few weeks, at the end of the antarctic summer, putting pressure on the Russians to make the final push or pull out until the next antarctic drilling season, starting in December.

The extreme cold, which limited drilling time, contributed to the long duration of the project. The Russian team also ran into delays caused by financial strains and by efforts to address international worries about their drilling operation.

Valery Lukin is leading the effort for the Russians. Last year, he said that their work is “like exploring an alien planet where no one has been before. We don’t know what we’ll find.”

American and English teams are planning drilling campaigns next year into much smaller antarctic lakes as scientists work to understand the dynamics of the continent, which holds more than 70 percent of the world’s fresh water. But Vostok, where the former Soviet Union began work after the United States settled in at the South Pole more than 50 years ago, is now acknowledged to be the “crown jewel” of Antarctica from a scientific perspective.

In recent years, researchers have discovered that microbes live in the ice wherever they explore in Antarctica, including deep in the Vostok borehole.

This finding has revolutionized thinking about the snow- and ice-covered continent and has encouraged researchers, including Priscu, to conclude that life almost certainly will be found in Vostok and the other subglacial lakes.

If microbes are found in Vostok, the discovery would have particular significance for astrobiology, the search for life beyond Earth. That’s because Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus have deep ice crusts that scientists think cover large amounts of liquid water warmed by sources other than the sun, just like Vostok.

Because of the stakes involved, the Russian effort has drawn criticism for its extensive use of kerosene, Freon and other chemicals to enable the drilling and to keep the borehole open during the long winter. Priscu said the Russians worked with an international group he helped form to come up with cleaner ways to drill the final section of the hole.

Organizations including the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, which is the official environmental umbrella group sitting at Antarctic Treaty organization meetings, have spoken against the drilling methods used by the Russians.

Some other groups have called for a ban on scientific research beneath the antarctic ice sheet so the area can remain pristine.

The Washington Post