AUV Practices for Icy Oceans of Europa

Roland Piquepaille writes, "Three months ago, I mentioned DEPTHX, a
robot built to explore deep water in Mexico. Now, scientists from the
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and NASA are working on a reengineered
version of the robotic probe. This new autonomous underwater vehicle
(AUV) will be called ENDURANCE.
This robotic device will be used to map
the icy waters of Antarctica. It will perform two exploration campaigns
of West Lake Bonney, a lake perpetually trapped beneath 12 to 15 feet of
ice in 2008 and 2009. Then it will be redesigned again to explore
gigantic Antarctica's Lake Vostok and maybe one day the icy oceans of
Europa, one of Jupiter's moons." For more details see Roland's blog post about the
ENDURANCE. See also our previous mention of DEPTHX and its journey down a
Mexican sinkhole.



Source: http://www.netchain.com