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Robot's lake project may lead to a moon mission
A robotic probe will go under the ice to explore the vast reaches of a Wisconsin lake in an effort to see if it can handle an outer space journey in a few years.
A team will conduct an under-ice test of a NASA-funded robotic probe called ENDURANCE, which stands for Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer.
The tough, frigid Wisconsin conditions should simulate and demonstrate whether the probe’s systems can operate in icy conditions as a first test of using such a vehicle in a similar environment on Jupiter’s moon Europa, said Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
ENDURANCE is a $2.3 million project funded by NASA’s Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets Program. The probe is an underwater vehicle designed to swim untethered under ice, creating three-dimensional maps of underwater environments. The probe also will collect data on conditions in those environments and use sensors to characterize the biological environment.
“Basically the game plan … is to test the vehicle’s performance in a cold ice-covered environment,†Doran said. “Up to now, it’s only been tested in relatively balmy environments like Texas and Mexico. We want to see what issues may come up by pushing it into the frigid water.â€
The next step by the research team is to ship the probe to Antarctica’s permanently frozen Lake Bonney later this year. Bonney is a two-and-a-half mile long, mile-wide, 130 foot-deep lake located in the continent’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. It lies perpetually trapped beneath 12 to 15 feet of ice.
ENDURANCE will map Bonney for a month and then do a second mapping in 2009. Data gathered will relay back to Chicago where researchers at UIC will generate various 3-D images, maps, and data renderings of the lake.
Science teams are developing and testing the technology for a possible underwater exploration mission on Europa far in the future.
The probe is a follow-up to the Deep Phreatic Thermal explorer, a NASA-funded project led by Stone Aerospace that completed a series of underwater field tests in Mexico in 2007.
ENDURANCE will explore an icy lake. Is Jupiter’s moon next?
