New Endurance AUV

[ethanb]

ENDURANCE being lifted from the parking lot and down to the water:

They had a 90 ton crane to lift it, but the vehicle was heavy enough that they couldn't extend the boom very far out, so the hole had to be fairly close to shore.  We're barely at the minimum depth range for the vehicle - maximum depth is 1000 meters.

Bill Stone preparing to connect the fiber optic cable for communication to the control room:
[img]http://lh6.google.com/ethan.brodsky/R7Ig5_p0JQI/AAAAAAAAMe8/kVpfFJK3y8M/s400/IMG_7307.jpg"[/img]
Once the vehicle checks out, it will go into an entirely autonomous operation mode and will do eight-hour survey dives without operator intervention before return to base. 

Adam, the National Geographic cinematographer, prepares to get in the water to film the vehicle's first dive. 
[img]http://lh3.google.com/ethan.brodsky/R7Ig7Pp0JTI/AAAAAAAAMfY/GdTXGEjShGI/s400/IMG_7310.jpg"[/img]

Here the vehicle is lifted out of the water after its first "dive":


Close up of the vehicle:
[img]http://lh5.google.com/ethan.brodsky/R7IhFvp0JmI/AAAAAAAAMh0/OTV9EdSh-tg/s400/IMG_7329.jpg"[/img]

Later in the week, it is planned for the vehicle to do some fully autonomous dives where it leaves the hole, travels around under the ice on its own, and then returns to the hole. 

The project is sponsored by NASA and is a collaboration between UIC (University of Illinois - Chicago), Montana State University, and Stone Aerospace.  I think that Carnegie Mellon was involved too in an earlier version of the robot, DEPTHX, which explored a deep cave in Mexico.  The AUV, called ENDURANCE (for "Environmentally Non-Distributing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer) is scheduled to explore Lake Bonney, a 130 foot deep lake in Antarctic that has been under 12-15 feet of ice more or less forever.  In the end, they want to Europa (yes, Jupiter's moon), to explore the oceans underneath its ice crust.

I have a photo gallery with more images here:


More about the project: