A cryobot or Philberth-probe is a robot that can penetrate water ice. A cryobot uses heat to melt the ice, and gravity to sink downward.
A cryobot or Philberth-probe is a robot that can penetrate water ice. A cryobot uses heat to melt the ice, and gravity to sink downward.
The cryobot is a surface-controlled instrumented vehicle desired to penetrate polar ice sheets down to 3,600 metres (11,800 ft) by melting. If built, it would likely measure temperature, stress, ice movement, and seismic, acoustic and dielectric properties. Such concept could also be used for other investigations with remote instrumentation. The general concept uses a hot point for melt penetration, instrumentation for control and measurement functions, supply conductor coils to link the probe with the surface for transmission of power and measurement signals.
The cryobot was invented by German physicist Karl Philberth, who first demonstrated it in the 1960s as part of the International Glaciological Greenland Expedition (EGIG), achieving drilling depths in excess of 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). In 1973 British scientists in Antarctica performed airborne ice-penetrating radar survey and detected a possible lake. [1] In 1991, the European remote sensing satellite ERS-1 confirmed the 1973 discovery of a large lake below four kilometers of ice, now named Lake Vostok. [2] The lake, which is the fifth largest freshwater lake in the world, is thought to be uncontaminated. In 2002 NASA was planning to use a cryobot to explore the lake, [3] [4] but the project did not happen.
In 2011, NASA awarded Stone Aerospace $4 million to fund the Phase 2 of project VALKYRIE (Very-Deep Autonomous Laser-Powered Kilowatt-Class Yo-Yoing Robotic Ice Explorer). [5] This project aims to create an autonomous cryobot capable of melting through vast amounts of ice. [6] The probe's power source differs from many other designs in that it does not rely on nuclear power to generate heat, but rather the power of a high energy laser fed to it through a fiber optic cable. [7] This is beneficial because nuclear probes are not allowed for testing in Antarctica as a result of the Antarctic Treaty. [8] Phase 2 of project VALKYRIE consisted of testing a scaled-down version of the cryobot in Matanuska Glacier, Alaska in 2015. [9] Following the success of these missions, Phase 3 of the project is then used a full-scale version of the cryobot to melt its way to a subglacial lake, collect samples, and then resurface. [6] [9] It featured a radar on the probe, [10] [11] integrated to an intelligent algorithm for autonomous scientific sampling and navigation. [12] The test was performed in 2017 on a probe called "Archimedes". [10]
Stone Aerospace integrated their ARTEMIS submersible with the VALKYRIE laser technology to develop a sophisticated cryobot called SPINDLE (Sub-glacial Polar Ice Navigation, Descent, and Lake Exploration). [13] [14] This third phase of the project would be viewed as a precursor to possible future missions to the icy moons of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, to explore the liquid water oceans thought to be present below their ice, and assess their potential habitability. [15] [16] [17]
Europa, or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. Europa was discovered independently by Simon Marius and Galileo Galilei and was named after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus.
Lake Vostok is the largest of Antarctica's almost 400 known subglacial lakes. Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at 3,488 m (11,444 ft) above mean sea level. The surface of this fresh water lake is approximately 4,000 m (13,100 ft) under the surface of the ice, which places it at approximately 500 m (1,600 ft) below sea level.
The Mars Polar Lander, also known as the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander, was a 290-kilogram robotic spacecraft lander launched by NASA on January 3, 1999, to study the soil and climate of Planum Australe, a region near the south pole on Mars. It formed part of the Mars Surveyor '98 mission. On December 3, 1999, however, after the descent phase was expected to be complete, the lander failed to reestablish communication with Earth. A post-mortem analysis determined the most likely cause of the mishap was premature termination of the engine firing prior to the lander touching the surface, causing it to strike the planet at a high velocity.
Deep Space 2 was a NASA space probe, part of the New Millennium Program. It included two highly advanced miniature space probes that were sent to Mars aboard the Mars Polar Lander in January 1999. The probes were named "Scott" and "Amundsen", in honor of Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, the first explorers to reach the Earth's South Pole. Intended to be the first spacecraft to penetrate below the surface of another planet, after entering the Mars atmosphere DS2 was to detach from the Mars Polar Lander mother ship and plummet to the surface using only an aeroshell impactor, with no parachute. The mission was declared a failure on March 13, 2000, after all attempts to reestablish communications following the descent went unanswered.
MARSIS is a low frequency, pulse-limited radar sounder and altimeter developed by the University of Rome La Sapienza and Alenia Spazio. The Italian MARSIS instrument, which is operated by the European Space Agency, is operational and orbits Mars as an instrument for the ESA's Mars Express exploration mission.
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is a NASA program for development of far reaching, long term advanced concepts by "creating breakthroughs, radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts". The program operated under the name NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts from 1998 until 2007 (managed by the Universities Space Research Association on behalf of NASA), and was reestablished in 2011 under the name NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts and continues to the present. The NIAC program funds work on revolutionary aeronautics and space concepts that can dramatically impact how NASA develops and conducts its missions.
Radioglaciology is the study of glaciers, ice sheets, ice caps and icy moons using ice penetrating radar. It employs a geophysical method similar to ground-penetrating radar and typically operates at frequencies in the MF, HF, VHF and UHF portions of the radio spectrum. This technique is also commonly referred to as "Ice Penetrating Radar (IPR)" or "Radio Echo Sounding (RES)".
The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed and built by Stone Aerospace, an aerospace engineering firm based in Austin, Texas. It was designed to autonomously explore and map underwater sinkholes in northern Mexico, as well as collect water and wall core samples. This could be achieved via an autonomous form of navigation known as A-Navigation. The DEPTHX vehicle was the first of three vehicles to be built by Stone Aerospace which were funded by NASA with the goal of developing technology that can explore the oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa to look for extraterrestrial life.
SHARAD is a subsurface sounding radar embarked on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe. It complements the MARSIS radar on Mars Express orbiter, providing lower penetration capabilities but much finer resolution.
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ENDURANCE is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed to map in three dimensions the geochemistry and biology of underwater terrains in Antarctica. The vehicle was built and designed by Stone Aerospace, and is the second incarnation of the DEPTHX vehicle, which was significantly reconfigured for the challenges particular to the Antarctic environment.
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Stone Aerospace is an aerospace engineering firm founded by engineer and explorer Bill Stone, located in Del Valle, a suburb of Austin, Texas.
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BRUIE is an autonomous underwater vehicle prototype by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The prototype began underwater testing in 2012 and it is meant to eventually explore the interior of water worlds in the Solar System, such as Europa or Enceladus.