NASA ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctic Explorer)
ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctic Explorer) is a $2.3 million project funded by NASA's Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) Program. The probe is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed to swim untethered under ice, creating three-dimensional maps of underwater environments. The probe will collect data on conditions in those environments using sensors to characterize the biological environment, and take samples of microbial life. The probe will be equipped to measure temperature, electrical conductivity, ambient light, chlorophyll-a, Dissolved Organic Matter, pH and redox of the water column in the entire lake. Visible imaging will be performed on the benthic microbial mats, other lake bottom materials, lake ice bottom and the glacier contact, for all of which there is a paucity of data. The AUV is being specifically designed to minimize impact on the environment it is working in. This is primarily to meet strict Antarctic environmental protocols, but will also be a useful feature for planetary protection and improved planetary science in the future.
The ENDURANCE probe will be tested in the permanently frozen Lake Bonney in Antarctica during December 2008. ENDURANCE is a rebuilt DEPTHX, outfitted with a new instrument package designed for exploring and sampling Lake Bonney, a 2.5 mile long, 1 mile wide, 130 foot deep perpetually ice-covered body of water located in the continent's McMurdo Dry Valleys. Data gathered will be relayed back to UIC's Electronic Visualization Laboratory to generate various three-dimensional images, maps and data renderings of the lake, according to ENDURANCE Principal Investigator Peter Doran of the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC).
Researchers are developing and testing the technology for a possible underwater exploration mission on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, far in the future. The probe is a follow-up to the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, a NASA-funded project that completed a series of underwater field tests in Mexico in 2007.
Principal Investigator:
Peter Doran, Associate professor in Earth and Environmental Sciences at University of Illinois, Chicago.
Co-investigators:
Andrew Johnson, Associate professor of Computer Science at University of Illinois,
Chicago.
John Priscu, Professor in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State
University.
Christopher McKay, Planetary Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Bin Chen, Material Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center.
William Stone, President of Stone Aerospace.