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ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer) is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed to map in three dimensions the geochemistry and biology of underwater terrains in Antarctica.[1] 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.[2]
The principal investigator for the ENDURANCE project was earth and environmental scientist Dr. Peter Doran of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Stone Aerospace was a co-investigator, along with Dr. John PriscuofMontana State University, and Dr. Chris McKayofNASA Ames Research Center. The project was funded by the NASA ASTEP program as well as by the National Science Foundation's United States Antarctic Program.[3]
The name of ENDURANCE is a backronym in tribute to Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic exploration ship Endurance.
The vehicle completed two field seasons in Lake Bonney in the Dry ValleysofAntarctica in 2008 and 2009.[5] Both field seasons served not only as a testing ground for the vehicle's many systems, but also as a means to gather actual scientific data about Lake Bonney.
The 2008 field season was immediately useful to the ENDURANCE engineers. The vehicle had issues with what came to be called micro-bubbles; the water of Lake Bonney has a high saturation of gas, which caused these micro-bubbles to form on the surface of the vehicle, constantly affecting its buoyancy, which in turn caused the vehicle to use much more power than predicted, as it used its down thrusters to compensate. The lateness of the field season also caused the team problems, as heavy runoff from Taylor Glacier brought visibility to nearly zero near the glacier. The planned imaging of the glacier was then all but impossible.[1]
The results of the 2008 field season prompted various upgrades to the vehicle. NASA approved $250,000 in upgrades for the 2009 season, which included upgraded batteries and an in-water charging system, as well as various software upgrades to improve data collection and real-time visualization. [6] The upgrades to the battery system allowed the vehicle to travel much further on a single charge than the previous season; in fact, one of the final runs of the vehicle successfully traveled through the narrows connecting the east and west lobes of Lake Bonney, a mission that had not been planned at the beginning of the field season.[7] The team also began their field campaign earlier in the season, and were able to obtain clear images of Taylor Glacier before the runoff prohibited it. [8]
NASA hopes to build upon lessons learned during testing for exploring objects in our solar system known to harbor sizable bodies of water, such as Jupiter's moon, Europa.[1]
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Category:NASA vehicles Category:European Space Agency Category:NASA programs Category:Spaceflight Category:Unmanned underwater vehicles
