Scenes From Under the Ice

11/28/2015

By Evan Clark

The environment beneath the ice in McMurdo Sound is other-worldly. Literally. That's part of the reason we are studying it - because it provides one of the best terrestrial analogs to what things might be like on Europa. ARTEMIS has 3 active cameras on board, and has been busy capturing scenes of the world below during our missions. Some of these scenes are incredibly beautiful - I can now understand why Antarctic divers reverently call going beneath the ice "entering The Cathedral".

ARTEMIS flies under a school of fish while gazing up at the ice ceiling. It's amazing how the world below the ice can be so alien, and yet so the same - the fish look like birds underneath a bank of clouds.

ARTEMIS approaches a sizable jellyfish which swam past our borehole.

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ARTEMIS is part of the SIMPLE project, supported by NASA ASTEP.

About the Blog

This is the personal blog of Peter Kimball and Evan Clark, following our deployment with the ARTEMIS long-range underwater robotic vehicle to explore beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

Authors

Peter Kimball is an aerospace engineer and field roboticist on the Stone Aerospace ARTEMIS project.

Evan Clark is a computer scientist and field roboticist on the Stone Aerospace ARTEMIS project.

Kristof Richmond is a mechanical engineer and field roboticist on the Stone Aerospace ARTEMIS project.