It may not show up on MapQuest, but NASA scientists are betting that the best route to Jupiter and its ice-crusted moon Europa runs through an underwater cavern in Mexico.
Though the space mission is probably 30 years off, the trek begins in earnest today outside the city of Tampico. A 60-ton crane is scheduled to lower a giant orange robot dubbed "Clementine" into what is believed to be the deepest flooded sinkhole in the world.
For the next two weeks, the fully autonomous robot, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a Volkswagen Beetle, will plumb the previously inaccessible microbial mysteries of the sinkhole -- or "cenote" -- El Zacatón.
Relying on an eclectic team of scuba divers, engineers, biologists and geochemists, NASA is hoping the mission will be the first leg on its journey to Europa.
"We're learning to explore Europa by first exploring a Mexican cenote," said John Rummel, a senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA.
The $5 million, three-year
Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (Depthx) project is an important test drive of a computerized, underwater vehicle that makes all of its own decisions -- where to swim, which samples to collect and how to get home. Each day, the battery-powered robot will travel deeper into the sinkhole, exploring nooks and crannies that human divers could never reach.
If Clementine performs well, a retooled version will head to Antarctica's Lake Bonney next year. Scientists think the conditions there -- vast thermal waterways below frozen ice -- more closely resemble those of Europa.
In developing Depthx, engineers aimed to build a machine that behaves like a microbiologist, said John R. Spear, an environmental microbiologist at the Colorado School of Mines. "I wanted this robot to be me."
Once the 3,300-pound vehicle, designed by Texas-based Stone Aerospace Inc., is lowered into the sinkhole, it "feels" changes in temperature, "sees" shifts in topography with 56 sonar sensors and "sips" water samples. Those are taken to a laboratory on the surface for further study.
