By: Amaya

It might look like some kind of giant mechanical orange, but this robot can withstand some serious temperatures no earth-bound fruit ever could.  "I usually say that it looks like a big tangerine," says Vickie Siegel, who works with Stone Aerospace, the company that built the bot. She says its real name is ENDURANCE, named after the ship that Sir Ernest Shackleton took to Antarctica in 1914.  

ENDURANCE, the robot, is headed to Antarctica later this year to explore vast, unknown regions -- namely huge, mysterious underground lakes.
 

One of them, Lake Bonney, is covered by 12 to 15 feet of ice all year long.  Scientists would love to know more about the world hidden beneath all that ice, so later this year, they want to send in a swimming robot to explore it. But first, they have to make sure the robot can take the cold.

"So far, this thing has had a very cushy life swimming around in Mexican caves, where the water is around 77 degrees Fahrenheit," explains Peter Doran, professor University of Illinois in Chicago and lead investigator for this project.  "So we want to put it to the test in the cold."

Some people call ENDURANCE "Clementine" because it's so round and orange.  The orange color comes from a special foam that helps ENDURANCE float. Siegel says the foam is actually her favorite part, and not just because it looks cheerful.  "There's nothing that can go wrong with the foam, really. Everything else is a potential problem," Siegel explains, wryly. 

Recently, the team put ENDURANCE to the test by sending her down under Lake Mendota, currently under ice, in Wisconsin.  The robot is the size of a Volkswagen bug, so making a hole in the ice large enough to fit her through took hours of work.  ENDURANCE weighs about 3,000 pounds -- not including its payload of science equipment, which will be tucked inside the robot later on.  On a real mission, the robot will swim just beneath the ice and lower sensors on a cable deeper into the water. 

And the Antarctic mission goes well? Someday a robot like this could be sent off to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. It has a thick icy crust and just maybe, inside, a secret ocean to be explored.

By: Amaya B - Date:03/10/2008

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