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.
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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?
All great questions. Unfortunately don't know answers to any of them. I believe a separate vehicle will be needed to drill.
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/