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Researchers from NASA and EVL Test Under-Ice Sub ENDURANCE
Participants: Andrew Johnson, Shriram Iyer, Peter Doran, Bill Chen (NASA Ames), Chris McKay (NASA Ames), John Priscu (Montana State Unversity), William Stone (Stone Aerospace)
Institutions: NASA Lake Mendota, WI Europa Here We Come: NASA Tests Under-Ice Sub with Eye Toward Jupiter - If successful at mapping lake terrain Wisconsin and Antarctica, it could be used to search for life in the ocean on Jupiter’s moon - By Larry Greenemeier Scientific American Online February 14, 2008 Please click this link to view the full text of this article Researchers from NASA and the University of Illinois at Chicago atop the frozen surface of Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota this week are preparing for interplanetary exploration. Below them, under a sheet of ice more than a foot (30 centimeters) thick, the space agency’s new Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-Ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer (ENDURANCE) maps the lake’s underwater terrain. If this and subsequent voyages are successful, a similar vessel could be sent to navigate the suspected liquid water under the frozen surface of the ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa by the year 2028. ENDURANCE, a $2.3-million project funded by NASA’s Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) program, is an autonomous vehicle designed to operate underwater below the ice. Its mission: to gather environmental data (such as samples of microbial life) and create three-dimensional maps of undersea topography. Email: laura@evl.uic.edu Date: February 14, 2008 |
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