DEPTHX Leads the Way for Europa Exploration

摘要

The depthx deep-diving robot swam where no one has swum before when it plunged to the bottom of a forbidding 1,000-foot sinkhole in central Mexico in May - and scientists are ecstatic.rnThe bulbous, four-foot-tall, three-foot-wide, 1.5 ton device -dubbed "Clementine" because of its orange paint job - brought back samples of nine new kinds of microbes to add to the list of about 100 already known to exist.rnEngineers and computer experts are grinning because DEPTHX - for Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, "phreatic" meaning underwater cavern - also showed that it can navigate autonomously in three dimensions in an unknown environment.