Another Cool Thing for NASA PAO To Ignore
NASA’s robotic sub readies for dive into Earth’s deepest sinkhole, Carnegie Mellon University
“Bill Stone, leader of the NASA-funded Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) mission, said the 2.5-meter-diameter vehicle performed “phenomenally well” during early February tests in the geothermal sinkhole, or cenote, known as La Pilita. Carnegie Mellon University researchers developed the software that guided the DEPTHX craft. … NASA has funded the mission to develop and test technologies that might someday be used to explore the oceans hidden under the icy crust of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.”
Editor’s note: A very cool mission – one that embodies a synergistic overlap of science, operations, and exploration. And what does NASA PAO do? As has been the case with NEEMO: nothing.
“You do not get Brownie points for having your name on a tombstone. You have to come back. With that in mind, I have actually taken a lot of cues from how NASA trains its astronauts when preparing for, and staffing, expeditions. In the subterranean world, where we are about to go, it is a gloves-off environment. The exploration front is now getting to the stage where it is so remote and so difficult to reach that no matter what technology we have at our disposal, and no matter how Olympically-trained and fit the people are who are involved with it, we still get stopped. Every time you go for four or five months in the field, if you’re lucky, you’re a kilometer or two deeper into the planet. I am going to try to give you an idea here just what this world is like. I’m going to show here what would be the equivalent of summitting Everest and K2, but it’s all going to be in one continuous trip proceeding down, in order to give you a sequential feel for the logistics and remoteness.”
Stone Aerospace — Design Philosophy (cool photos)
“StoneAerospace is a Texas-based company dedicated to the exploration and commercialization of the frontiers we know of and the discovery of the ones yet to come. We develop the tools needed to explore the frontier, to survive and work in it, to characterize it, and to exploit it.”
