The underwater drone named Orpheus, developed by NASA and WHOI, successfully completed its first ocean mission.
They say that diving to the bottom of the ocean is harder than going into space. Hundreds of astronauts escaped to near earth orbit, but on the fingers of one hand you can list the people who visited the deep ocean floor: Jacques Piccard, James Cameron and Don Walsh.
We have now mapped 100% of our oceans to a resolution of 5km, which isn’t that good compared to our 100 meter radar map of Venus. But radar can penetrate the Venusian atmosphere, it cannot penetrate to the ocean floor.
Due to this, we still do not know much about what is actually happening in the deepest parts of the ocean, especially in the so-called Hadrian zone, which is 6000-11,000 Metres (3.7-6.8 miles) below the surface. Though that area comprises 45% of the world's oceans. So nearly half of the worlds ocean remains largely unexplored. At least for now.
But that might soon change, thanks to NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the world’s leading non-profit dedicated to exploring our oceans.
NASA and WHOI have partnered on a $1.2 million, privately funded effort to research, design, and build a new robot to explore the Hadal zone. A submarine called the Orpheus is complete and ready to explore that underwater wilderness with a whole array of scientific instruments. One day, vehicles like it could explore oceans elsewhere in the solar system, too.
The Orpheus drone was launched into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Cod in September.
Bobby Foster for OceanX/Bloomberg Philanthropies
The group named the new drone Orpheus, after the mythic Greek hero who dove to the depths of hell to serenaded Hades, the lord of the underworld. It is hoped that Orpheus will one day find new sea creatures at the bottom of the ocean and snap photos of deep-sea life.
Diving and operating at those depths is hard. The WHOI team thought their Nereus deep-ocean vehicle was up to the task in 2014, but the remote-operated machine was lost some six miles under the sea after just six weeks of exploration. So for this project, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab are lending a hand.
Their goal is to create a drone submersible so small and so light that, if all goes right, a very distant relative of that same design could explore the icy oceans of Jupiter’s smallest moon, Europa. Orpheus is the first step in that direction.
The team completed the first untethered, autonomous test of the new drone in September, just outside Cape Cod Bay. The robot went to a depth of 176 meters, which is still far above the hadal zone, so it's clear Orpheus still has a long way to go.
The team has equipped Orpheus with four Go-Pro like cameras (with flashes), to help the vehicle navigate on its own and to capture the scenery. The aim is to creates an almost panoramic view of the ocean floor.
During the 176 metre test dive, Orpheus's cameras glimpsed some "crab-like" and "tube-shaped" creatures.
The Orpheus drone need to be completely autonomous due to the fact that communication from the bottom of the ocean to the surface can take longer than to the Moon. The drone need to decide on its own about hazards and when to surface.
When Orpheus completes its mission, it releases a couple of steel weights that fall to the sea floor, allowing the machine to float up to the surface and signal for rendezvous. If something were to wrong, the weights are designed to rust off within about a day, which would force the drone back to the ocean surface.
NASA doesn't really do ocean exploration but the pressure at the bottom of Earth's oceans, 16,000 pounds per square inch (psi), happens to be remarkably similar to the pressure on Jupiter's watery moon, Europa.
That makes the Jovian moon is top of NASA's list of candidates, in the search for alien life. But first the group must learn how to spot and recognise the other-worldly life forms that might inhabit an alien ocean.
Orpheus is designed to be a kind of ocean-floor detective in such areas; it's being outfitted with sensors to detect methane, hydrogen sulphide, and helium, which are all promising ingredients for life.
The plan is for Orpheus to eventually be joined by a fleet of other drones. The troupe of about 20 drones would sniff around the deepest corners of world's oceans, looking for signs of life and zeroing in to take photos.
Source: Business Insider
