NASA Robot to Explore 'Bottomless' Pit

[trux]

Quote from an article at Space.com:

A robotic yellow submarine will journey this week to the world's deepest sinkhole, which already has taken the life of one diver who sought to reach its bottom and discover the life that might exist there.
Others have tried to reach the end of this seemingly bottomless pit in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, known to be at least 925 feet deep, but no one has ever succeeded.
The self-automated "DEPTHX" (Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer) will search the depths of the El Zacaton cenote, or geothermal sinkhole, for life and also study its dimensions and look for the vents that feed it.
...

925 feet - maybe they could give Herbert a ride to the abbyss. He could save so on the sled development

photo credit © The Field Robotics Center

[shoutatthesky]

For those of us that use normal measurement values that would be just over 280 meters. SCUBA divers have been deeper than that. Are they using a submarine vehicle due to temperature perhaps?

[shoutatthesky]

Why are submarines always yellow?

[joe123321]

Originally Posted by shoutatthesky

Why are submarines always yellow?

It said a scuba diver has already died exploring it.

and for the yellow submarine question

YouTube - Yellow Submarine

[trux]

Originally Posted by shoutatthesky

For those of us that use normal measurement values that would be just over 280 meters. SCUBA divers have been deeper than that. Are they using a submarine vehicle due to temperature perhaps?

Yes, it is just the Zacaton Cenote where the former scuba depth record of 281.9m was set by Jim Bowden in 1994. It was then surpassed by another cave dive record of 282.6m by Nuno Gomes (SA) in the Boesman Caves, South Africa. in 1996. Nuno Gomez set also a 318m (1000ft) record in the Red Sea in 2005.


The Zacaton Cenote is known to be at least 1080 feet deep, but possibly more. It is extremely difficult and dangerous to make further speleological exploration at these depths. At that depth you do not have much time and brain power to make any exploration if the terrain becomes more complicated, and very little time to do so. The man who died in Zacaton was a very experienced diver - Sheck Exley, the inventor of scuba Octopus. He died at 879ft.

El Zacaton - photo credit © UTexas.edu

There is another abyss where depth records were broken in the past. It is the Hranicka Abyss in the Czech Republic. Divers dove in the abyss to -181m (Polish diver Krzysztof Starnawski in 2000), and it was explored by an autonomous robot similar to the DEPTHX. The R.O.V. descended to 205m but did not reach the bottom. Some speleologists estimate the depth could be around 500m. Hence possibly deeper than Zacaton (but so far it is only a speculation). More about the abyss for example here: http://www.advanceddivermagazine.com...s/Moravian.pdf

Hranicka Abyss - image credit © geologie.vsb.cz

[shoutatthesky]

Wow Sheck Exley! I have just been reading about him in Berrnie Chaudury's book 'The Last Dive'. He sounded like an amazing diver who took safety very seriously always insisting he had much more to learn.
I think I will leave cave diving be for the moment. No mistakes are tolerated in that realm.

[trux]

There is another new article about the NASA robotic submarine ENDURANCE. The ultimate plan for it is sending it (or better told its descendant) to Jupiter's moon Europa, where astronomers suspect a 100 km deep ocean under the surface ice crust. The robot wil have to bite through about 6 km of ice to reach it.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/11...-another-test/

Currently, the Endurance operated successfully in a frozen lake in Wisconsin, after getting through 25 meter of ice. Now it will plunge under a permanently ice covered lake in Antarctica that is 40 meters deep under ice.

If all goes well the next test would have the probe or an improved version descend through 3.5 km of ice to one of the world's largest, deepest and most mysterious lakes, Lake Vostok, also in Antarctica.

endurance-submarine.jpg europa.png

[octopus]

I thought the main reason for not going into Lake Vostok was sterilisation problem. As the lake has been isolated for significant period of time, it is argued that it might contain some unusual micro organisms. Any probe that goes into the lake without sterilisation would contaminate it with surface micro life. It has been speculated that Lake Vostok probe would be test for Europa probe.

[Jon]

Maybe Ted (Unirdna) will pipe in on the Endurance. He was ground support for that one as the tests took place at the lab where he works.

I know he had to do some other lake measurments for NASA in the past- like taking actual ice thickness measurements to compare to the measurements that the satilite took from space so they could calculate the accuracy of the satilite.

Jon

[trux]

I thought the main reason for not going into Lake Vostok was sterilisation problem.

That's why they are developing this ENDURANCE rover - it stands for Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer. It's supposed not to contaminate the environment, though personally I have quite strong doubts about its feasibility.

[Erik]

Sheck Exley's biography is a great read, whether you're SCUBA/TECH/freediver. A great guy who pushed hard.

Caverns Measureless to Man

Amazon.ca: Caverns Measureless to Man: Sheck...