Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
At the beginning of March, DSN reported on DEPTHX.
The picture is of DEPTHX. It weighs about 1.2 tons, shaped like a mushroom, and can navigate itself into your bedroom. Just kidding. Not really. It can swim through a water-filled cavern creating its own map. It has already explored La Pilita, a 115 meter sink. So be weary not to let your house fill up with water.
This week, DEPTHX explores the 1,000ft deep Zacaton Lake in Mexico, the world's deepest sinkhole. The goal is to both comprehensively 3-D map the Zacaton but collect water samples as well. However exciting this may be, the plan for this AUV (unmanned, untethered, Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) is to explore the deep sea under the crust of frozen ice on Jupiter's moon Europa by 2019. Daily mission updates can be found at DEPTHX website.
Comments
Great stuff.A few questions. How thick is the crust; how much does it vary? Will a separate vehicle be necessary to punch a hole in the crust for safe entry? Will a more sophisticated AUV be available (same size and weight) by launch-time?
Posted by: baryogenesis | May 16, 2007 5:59 PM
All great questions. Unfortunately don't know answers to any of them. I believe a separate vehicle will be needed to drill.
Posted by: CR McClain | May 16, 2007 8:10 PM
Hey, you may be interested to know that a science writer from the University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences is posting field updates from Mexico on the DEPTHX mission to Zacaton. You can read them at
http://geology.com/zacaton/
Posted by: J.B. Bird | May 18, 2007 8:03 AM