An international team of scientists led by the United Kingdom has been given the go-ahead to explore one of the planet's last great frontiers – an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. Buried under 1.86 miles of ice, the lake may have been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years, and could contain unique forms of life. The team hopes the exploration will yield vital clues about life on Earth, climate change and future sea-level rise.

Following the success in early 2008 of an International Polar Year project to map the extent and depth of sub-glacial Lake Ellsworth, the Natural Environment Research Council is funding a consortium of multidisciplinary researchers from nine UK universities, the British Antarctic Survey and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

During the next five years, the researchers will acquire and develop the technologies needed for this ambitious project. During the 2012-2013 Antarctic winter season, the research team will go “deep field” into West Antarctica to sample water from the lake in the search for tiny life forms never before seen, and to extract sediment from the lake bed to find clues as to how the climate has changed over many millennia.

Consortium leader Professor Martin Siegert from the University of Edinburgh says: "This is a benchmark in polar exploration – our team will be the first to explore this ancient lake. It is a dark, cold place that has been sealed from the outside world and it's likely to contain unique forms of life. We hope to discover more about how life can exist in extreme environments and how Antarctica has changed in the past – which might help us understand more about other places on earth."

In such an extreme environment, the mere presence of life in itself would be a major scientific discovery, but there are very strong reasons to expect that such microorganisms would possess special or unique adaptations to this unusual and potentially hostile habitat.

Around 150 lakes have been discovered beneath Antarctica's vast ice sheet, and so far, little is known about them. Getting into the lake is a huge technological challenge, but the effort is worth it. These lakes are important for a number of reasons. Their potential for unusual life forms could shed new light on evolution of life in harsh conditions, and lake-floor sediments could yield vital clues to past climate. Some sub-glacial lakes may be as old as the ice sheet. The age of the water within the lakes will be as old as the ice that melts into them, which, in West Antarctica, is around 150,000 years.

Long and thin, Lake Ellsworth is situated 1.86 miles beneath the ice. Results from 2008/2009 experiments revealed that the lake is nearly 500 feet deep.

David Blake, head of Technology and Engineering at the British Antarctic Survey, and involved in the project, reveals, "This project is a great scientific challenge and the technology required to drill 3 km [1.86 miles] through the ice without contaminating the lake is equally ambitious. Over the next few years, we will build a hot water drill and probe, and make preparations to transport a sophisticated operation deep into the interior of West Antarctica. We really are at the frontiers of scientific exploration."