Gamburtsev Mountain Range

As part of the 2007–09 International Polar Year, so called, the AGAP project was a multinational effort to gather information about the Gamburtsev mountain chain.

Completion

Scientists announced the completion of their mission on 25 February 2009. Modern-day remote-sensing technology revealed a very jagged landscape. The gathered data will be analysed by researchers in the following months. Dr Fausto Ferraccioli from the British Antarctic Survey said: "We can confirm they are there; we've seen them under the ice. Not only are they similar in dimension to the European Alps, but they are also similar in aspect: we see very sharp peaks and valleys which are remarkably similar to the Alps themselves. It all adds to the mystery – from the tectonic perspective of how these mountains were created; and from the glacial history perspective of how the East Antarctic ice sheet was formed and didn't erode these peaks."

The AGAP project comprised scientists, engineers, pilots and support staff from Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two field camps were established deep within the Antarctic interior and aircraft flew across the ice, mapping the shape of the sub-glacials using an ice-penetrating radar. The local gravitational and magnetic fields were also measured. 120,000 km were flown, with over 20% of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet being explored during the course of the mission.

Information was recorded on a network of seismometers that picked up earthquake signals passing through the rock from the opposite side of the planet. Despite the extreme temperatures — around −30 °C at the two base camps as reported by AGAP US co-leader Dr Robin Bell — liquid water was detected in the valleys three kilometres beneath the team. Ferraccioli added: "Up until now we just had an ambitious plan. Now we have all this remarkable data to pore over."

By December, 2009, data analyzed so far from the AGAP project indicate the mountain range is generally oriented southwest to northeast, and arose from tectonic plate activity.

The team's next goal is to drill through the ice and collect the first Gamburtsev rock samples. "Amazingly, we have samples of the moon but none of the Gamburtsevs," said Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. "With these rock samples we will be able to constrain when this ancient piece of crust was rejuvenated and grew to a magnificent mountain range."