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Project SIMPLE

14 images Created 18 Nov 2016

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  • Transantarctic Mountains photographed from SIMPLE camp located on the frozen sea ice of McMurdo Sound
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  • SIMPLE camp, and an innocent looking Polar Haven tent. There is a LOT going on inside.
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  • Inside the Polar Haven Bill Stone is checking out Artemis, a NASA funded underwater robot being tested at SIMPLE camp. Britney Schmidt, primary investigator of the project, looks on. Artemis is a prototype of a robot that may be sent to Jupiter's moon Europa to explore the under ice environment of that moon.
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  • Artemis carries instruments for characterizing the water, ice and any microbiology found within and below the ice: a CTD, ADCP, mapping and profiling sonars, imaging, HD video, a science tower with DOM, chlorophyll-a, turbidity, pH sensors, a water sampler and a protein fluorescence spectrometer to test for microbiological communities within and on the ice.  Artemis is 1000m depth rated, and will perform ~15 km long surveys at the ice-ocean interface to fully characterize the environment.
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  • Pre-launch group meeting reviewing the goals and roles of the tests being run that day.
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  • Launching Artemis
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  • Launching Artemis
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  • Beacon being lowered into McMurdo Sound to guide the robot back home. The beacon is only there as a backup, the robot will normally find its way home after making its run without use of the beacon.
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  • Running through the checklists
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  • The robot trails a fiber optic cable so that manual control of the sub can be used in case of failure.
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  • Bill Stone of Stone Aerospace preparing for a robot check out dive before the test run begins.
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  • Manual control of the robot is done through a modified xbox controller. Sonar and video feeds from Artemis can be seen on the screen.
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  • Once the robot starts its kilometers long run there are several hours of waiting and monitoring data from Artemis. The data stream from the robot's myriad sensors is projected on the wall.
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Portraits of Place - Photographs by Shaun O'Boyle

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