VALKYRIE

Matanuksa Glacier, Alaska
June 17th – 26th, 2015

Let the science begin

Time flies here, and I’m already behind on blog posts! Things have been a whirlwind of activity. On June 16th, the day after I arrived on the glacier, the first batch of scientists arrived in Anchorage, as well as the chief engineer for VALKYRIE, Bart. The scientists are: Al, a professor at UC Boulder, and his graduate student Omkar, and Sarah and Vicky, who are PhD students at UCSC studying Glaciology and Paleoclimatology respectively. Al and Omkar are testing an ice-penetrating synthetic aperature radar that will be mounted on future versions of VALKYRIE and will allow the robot to steer away from obstacles or towards targets of scientific interest in the ice. Sarah and Vicky are using ground penetrating radar to measure the glacier’s depth, phase sensitive radar to measure the glacier’s melt-rate, time lapse photography from a camera on a moraine ridge to measure its flow speed, and embedding sensor strings into the ice to measure shear and temperature.

Vicky and Sarah were able to make it up to base camp on the evening of the 16th, but Bart, Al, Omkar and Vickie S. were delayed until the next morning by down-slope crosswinds which made bush plane landing unsafe, so they slept at the tongue of the glacier.

Al prepares the gantry and melt hole for a synthetic aperture radar run

Sarah and Vicky’s timelapse camera watches over the glacier

Once everyone arrived, the scientists began their experiments, and we Stone Aerospace engineers kept busy setting up mission control, re-assembling the robot (it had to be disassembled to be transported – it’s too long!), unpacking, and figuring out what to do about all the things that were inevitably forgotten or broken between lab in Austin and here. One of the most important things we managed to forget was a pig-tail power and data connector that connects the robot’s tether to mission control, which we can’t run without. John and I spent a full day searching through all the boxes, searching them again, and then finally cutting and splicing a spare cable into what we needed after determining that the connector was left in Austin. I am learning once again how much harder it is to do anything in the field – even something as simple as connecting a cable can take a whole day by the time you’re done. There’s just so much friction, and things you can usually take for granted are either unreliable or absent. In computer science there’s a term for this that amuses me: “Yak Shaving” – when you have to spend a huge amount of time setting up the system, just to do something easy. The pile of yak hair is growing large out here…

John splices the power and comms pigtail

Ready to roll!

Bart assembles the water sampling system that will be bolted onto the back of the robot as part of the new science package. “Last year’s” robot is visible in the background

Because we weren’t yet ready to melt holes with VALKYRIE, and Al and Omkar’s radar measurements are physical, not biological (and thus they aren’t worried about biological melthole contamination), they melted holes with the Hotsy. The Hotsy is basically a diesel water heater connected to a garden hose. Poor Omkar didn’t have nearly as good of a mission control tent as us, and was camped out under a tarp with a camp chair and his computer, but he was a trooper. Every time they melted a few inches deeper, he yelled out “Haul!” and Al lowered the radar to the bottom of the hole with a winch. As to not distort their radar image, it’s important for them to keep the radar moving at a constant velocity through the ice. It’s very tedious work, and they were out in the sun and cold all day every day doing this. But it should yield awesome results imaging the glacier below. The things we do for science…

Meanwhile, Sarah and Vicky hiked around the glacier taking depth, meltrate, and flow measurements using their various radars and cameras. In the longterm, they hope to understand the physical characteristics of the glacier.

I’ve had my head buried in the ground with this robot for so long, it’s cool to see all the other aspects of the VALKYRIE Project science that I haven’t necessarily been aware of.

Al and Omkar lower their custom ice-penetrating synthetic aperture radar into a melt hole.

The SAR down the melthole. Future versions will allow VALKYRIE to “see” ahead of itself in the ice

Team UC Boulder, happy at the end of their deployment

Al and Omkar finished up their experiments, and were pretty pleased with their preliminary results. Because camp can only support a limited number of people, and it’s cheaper to batch bush plane flights together (so both up-glacier and down-glacier flights are utilized), when one group of scientists leaves, the next group typically comes in at the same time. Al and Omkar left on the 23rd and were replaced by Nathan.

Nathan is a key player in this year’s expedition. He designed a “flow cytometer” instrument that will bolt on the end of last year’s robot and is a primary component of this year’s new science package. “Flow cytometer” is what we call it for lack of a better name, but it not really a traditional cytometer, which counts only a single cell flowing through at a time. This has a much greater diameter viewing window, and it measures the fluorescence spectrum of all the meltwater passing through it at once. Nathan has characterized a series of spectral “fingerprints” for various components of interest that could be in the water (e.g. general proteins, chlorophyll, various minerals), and our software does real-time chemometric fitting of this data to determine how much of each component is in the water. A large part of our mission this year will be collecting data to characterize this instrument. If things go well, we’ll use the real-time data to autonomously trigger water samples based on interesting content in the water, which can then be brought back to lab for further analysis. This will be the first autonomous sample collection by a cryobot, and a big step towards an eventual Europa mission, where no scientists can be around to direct the robot!

Storm clouds settle in over a river channel cut through the ice

The glacier continues to astound me. It has moods, just like a human, and lives in constant flux. I bring all my warm clothes to the glacier every day, even if it is warm and sunny in the morning, because it could pour freezing rain within an hour. Weather predictions are useless; all there is here is now. Sometimes a curtain of rain will ride howling winds ominously down-valley towards us, obscuring the entire pass in darkness, only to change its mind a mile away and retreat back over the peaks from which it came, leaving us blinking in the sunlight like nothing ever happened. Sometimes it will stay the course, and during those times I’m glad to be warm and dry in mission control.

Also like a human, the glacier is full on contradictions. The most beautiful to me is the contrast of jagged and organic, linear and smooth. The glacier is shot through with cracks and linear features, many of them filled with water and refrozen into pure blue ice, then overturned in layers to create planes slicing at every angle. But it is also carved by water in lazy snake-like patterns, large looping oxbows, and smooth scalloped waterfalls. Occasionally, one of these curving rivulets will find a refrozen crack and follow it on to the next and the next; suddenly the path of the water will shift from smooth sinuous S’s to zig-zagging Z’s.

The glacier changes rapidly. Here a rivulet of water traces a lazy oxbow.

The next day the water has broken through the wall and cuts a new path.

The surface of the ice is also in rapid flux. Endlessly bombarded by sun, it is continuously ablated away. Any darker sediment on the surface heats up, and melts a hole down into the ice (much like VALKYRIE), until these dark particles melt deep enough that the sun cannot reach them because the hole is too deep, so they stop heating. Then the surface ablates away, making the hole shallower again, and the process repeats, in inchworm fashion. These holes are called cryokonites, and each is a mini self-contained microbial ecosystem. Every square inch of the ice is covered with them, and on particularly sunny days, it looks like someone has blasted the entire glacier with a sandblaster from above.

When dark sediments on the ice surface are heated by the sun, they melt downwards, much like VALKYRIE. These holes are called cryokonites, and each is its own miniature microbial ecosystem.

The cyrokonites are not the only sign of the constant ablation. The glacier is also ablating out from underneath us and our science structures. If we do nothing, our structures will soon slide away as the ice is melted out from underneath them on the uphill side. Within a few days, flat ice becomes an increasingly precarious pedestal. Periodically, Josh and Vickie must go around to all of the structures, lift them up on farm jacks, chip the ice pedestals flat, and adjust the 6 legs of the structure (also on jacks) to some semblance of level again. If you’re inside mission control when this happens, it feels like being on a ship.

The ice continually melts away beneath our structures. Every few days, Josh and Vickie chip flat any “pedestals” developing under Mission Control’s legs, and adjust the jacks to re-level the floor.

The chiller is not on an adjustable platform, so it is in more danger of sliding away. John periodically uses a V-anchor in the ice and a webbing winch to pull it up to flat ground.

We’ve been working very hard and will have the robot fully assembled and all the logistics in place soon. Once that happens, we’ll be ready to fire up the laser to start making some VALKYRIE test holes. Stay tuned…

A quiet moment at Mission Control.

Walking home in perpetual twilight after a long day of work.

Reporting by Evan Clark

Matanuska Glacier
June 15th – 16th, 2015

On Ice

Today was the big day. I left for the San Jose airport at about 6am, with a flight to Seattle, then Anchorage. Vickie was kind enough to book me with window seats on both flights, so I was treated to a view the whole way (tip: if you’re ever flying Anchorage-Seattle, you will skirt the continental edge – try to get a window seat pointing towards land – it’s stunning, vast and free wilderness stretches far as the eye can see).

I landed in Anchorage around 1pm local, and was slated to meet another Stone Aerospace engineer, John, flying in from West Virginia at 2pm. His takeoff got delayed on the tarmac, so I grabbed my gear from baggage claim and settled in at a restaurant outside security to wait for him, thinking about the places I was going to and the places I had come from. John arrived, got his baggage, and Bill and Vickie swung by in a rented car to pick us up, having come off the glacier to visit the Anchorage supply locker, take care of some errands in town, and drive us up to the tongue of the glacier. We were actually supposed to meet a cadre of 3 other people (another Stone Aerospace engineer and two scientists from UC Boulder working on an ice-penetrating radar), but they were delayed a day due to a blown fuse on the radar.

Mountains on mountains on mountains near Anchorage

We dropped Vickie off at a Motel 8 in town to take care of some Anchorage errands, and then headed Northeast on Highway 1 with Bill. In Palmer (last chance, get whatever you need now!), we stopped at Fred Meyer and stocked up on some last minute forgotten supplies (for me, a sleep eye cover – it never gets dark this far North and near the solstice!, a sun hat, a field notebook, and some bandannas). Next stop, the tongue of the Matanuska!

We continued along winding mountain roads for another hour and a half, with Bill and John talking about caving, and me watching the scenery go by. Growing up in Salt Lake City, a mountain kid at heart, I always forget how much I miss real mountains, and how full my soul feels when I am near them again. And here they are impressive – jutting up out of the landscape, steep and rugged, seemingly a dime a dozen, such that a peak that would be by far the most majestic landmark if placed near my California coastline home might not even merit a name here.

So we traveled onward, with each glimpse of white my heart increasing tempo, wondering – could this be the one? Until finally, the sign I was looking for: “Glacier View Point”.

First glimpse of the Matanuksa from Highway 1

Then there it was, its scale not conveyed by any of the pictures I had researched, a huge, fractured river of ice bursting out of the belly of the mountains, as if even their massive walls could not contain it. 4 miles wide, 27 miles long, pulverizing all the land that lay in its path, such that even the rivers we had passed ran slate gray with fine silt.

We turned off the highway down a wide dirt road, and soon came to a river crossing. “Well, I have to be upfront here”, Bill half-joked, “As a structural engineer, I have absolutely no confidence in this bridge”. “Well, it was great to know you guys”, I returned, but we rolled across with nary more than a few groans of protest from the aging wood. Finally, we arrived at our destination, Glacier Park, where we would be flown by bush plane to our camp on the glacier.

Bush planes are funny things. Incredibly light, and with balloon tires so big they look like they belong in a cartoon, they can take off or land in incredibly tight spaces – back-country runways only 100 feet long, cleared of major vegetation by chainsaw. Only one of us (plus the pilot and our gear), could travel at once, so I hopped in behind Bill Stevenson, the pilot, and with earmuffs protecting my hearing from the loud drone of the propeller, soon we were aloft. We flew low towards the glacier, the land below changed suddenly from brush green, to moraine gray, to glacier blue and white. I felt like I could brush the tops of the ridges with my fingertips; they swooped towards us and then dropped away again in a mesmerizing pattern of refrozen fractures and sinuously carved water channels. About 6 miles up glacier, we circled wide a few times over camp, with magnificent valley views each time, then came in for landing at an old hunter’s airstrip the VALKYRIE project had reclaimed from the underbrush. With a bump, a bounce, and another bump, we touched down on Earth again.

John followed close behind in another bush plane, and Josh, our camp manager, came out to greet us and assist with our luggage. He gave us the run-down of camp, laid out the ground rules, and handed us our tents, sleeping bags, and bear mace. Base camp is divided into two areas, a kitchen/social area with a fire pit, dining area, and a huge dome tent for hanging out / hiding from mosquitoes, and a sleeping area containing each individual’s tent. Each area is encircled with a portable electric fence to keep bears out. The bathroom is a shallow trench about 100m into the underbrush, shielded by a small rise for privacy. Mission Control camp on the glacier is about a 15 minute hike away, down the glacial embankment, across the moraine, and finally across the ice. Vickie, Josh, Kyle, and David have been here for about a week setting up – establishing base camp, guiding heavy cargo helicopter flights onto the glacier (laser, generator, chiller, mission control structures), unpacking the gear, building our command shelters, and much more. The logistics are at least as hard as engineering the robot – these guys are heroes.

Your new home awaits

Base-camp is on solid ground to the side of a glacier in an area of sparse underbrush. Food is kept in bear boxes, organics are burned, and the camp is encircled by a portable electric fence to keep bears out.

I got settled in, ate a hearty dinner Josh cooked us, chatted and played the camp guitar for a little while, then went for bed. Time-wise, I felt totally disoriented – it was weird retiring in broad daylight, but my watch said 11pm. I didn’t feel tired, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out like a rock.

The next morning, itching to see the glacier for real, I ate breakfast and headed out for a short hike, equipped with water, camera, radio, bear mace, and my loudest singing voice (as to not surprise any furry friends). For awhile, I was worried the travel would be mostly bushwhacking, but before long I located an old hunter’s path which allowed me to move relatively unimpeded. I made my way to a ridge with a clear view up and down valley, took some photographs, and drank in the untamed wilderness. To watch and listen to the glacier is a study in perspective – here I was, a small speck on the side of something that had witnessed a time before humanity, something so vast and powerful than it would not even notice if it rolled over me, or sucked me into its depths. And yet, before me, it was melting, the sound of rushing water and rocks tumbling endlessly into the depths of a moulin, the scooped valley walls above me marking how much the ice had retreated, the terrifying realization laid bare to see: how the combined small effects of me and many other specks are withering this awe-inducing creature towards nothing. How the glacier is dying.

The Matanuska glacier rumbles down-valley

I returned to camp, and mustered my gear to head out to the glacier and begin the work day. Kyle guided me to Mission Control – a well-trodden trail down a hill, across the moraine (glacier ice covered in upturned sediment, rocks, and boulders), and finally onto the ice itself, imparting glacier travel safety tips along the way.

The main Mission Control tent, housing the laser, the control computers, and keeping the engineers warm and happy for some potentially long deployments.

Finally we arrived at mission control – for now a few large tents, generators, cargo crates, and various infrastructure needed to run the robot. More tents will pop-up in the coming weeks as the main body of the science crews arrive with various requirements for their experiments. We even have limited cellular and internet service on the ice from a radio tower visible as a white speck on a peak at the foot of the valley. I spent the rest of the day working with John to set up the interior of the mission control tent – unpacking crates, inventory-ing gear, setting up computers, organizing. I was even able to duck out a few times to wander around a bit, marvel at the glacier, and snap a few photos in artistic mode instead of documentary mode. Here’s the best one I got:

Mountains, clouds, and ice are mirrored in a pristine glacial pool

A group of scientists and other engineers fly in tomorrow, and camp will get more lively. We’ll spend the next few days getting set up. I can’t wait to get started on the science.

Reporting by Evan Clark

VALKYRIE ice block testing, Stone Aerospace Headquarters
May 21st – 27th, 2015

Matanuska or bust

This post is actually a bit old, but here goes:

In a nutshell, you can think of VALKYRIE as a big, slow melt-torpedo. The nose is heated, and melts the ice in front of it, and the robot sinks downwards through gravity. Heat-based cryobots have several design advantages over drill-based penetrators because they are mechanically passive (less moving parts to break), and can be more sterile (more on this momentarily). On Europa the best way to provide the heat energy for both melting and powering the vehicle would be though a radioisotope thermal generator, but here on Earth procuring the radioactive element is a bureaucratic near-impossibility because of nuclear non-proliferation treaties needfully locking down the manufacturing and distribution of such isotopes because of potential weaponization. With VALKYRIE, we’ve side-stepped the problem by using a high-powered surface-based laser shot down a fiber optic cable to heat the robot. It is truly an underwater robot (Stone Aerospace’s specialty), because as the robot tunnels downwards, the melt-hole will fill with water. Not in Alaska, but in colder places where we plan to go in the future, such as Antarctica and Europa, the melt-hole will actually refreeze behind the robot, sealing it in its own “melt-bubble” as it travels downwards. Unlike with a drill, where if the bore-hole ice refreezes, you risk bit breakage, with a cryobot the refreezing is actually a feature.

One of the greatest concerns for any Earth-based or extraterrestrial ice-penetrating robot is bio-contamination – whether tunneling into a sub-glacial lake or Europa’s ocean the penetrator risks carrying chemical and biological contamination into these pristine environments that have often been sealed off from the surface world for millions of years. Because the melthole refreezes behind a cryobot, there is never a direct link between the target environment and the surface. Furthermore, because a cryobot is an underwater robot, it is hermetically sealed, and much easier to pre-sterilize by dunking it in a sterilizing bath that can work its way into all the nooks and crannies of the machine in a way that a a regular cleaning could not.

One downside of a heat based penetrator is that if you are not in contact with ice, you cannot make forward progress. This could happen if there are sediments trapped in the glacier, which, as you melt through the ice, settle to the bottom of the melt-hole. Soon enough, the nose of the robot is resting on a pile of dirt, not ice, and you are stopped in your tracks! With VALKYRIE, we use water jets to address this problem. As the vehicle descends, it actually sucks up the melt water, runs it pasts the super-heated laser “beam dump” to heat it, and shoots the hot water out the front as a series of jets. The jets serve to blast any sediments back into suspension in the melt water, and also allows us to melt though the ice more quickly. The robot can also slowly turn by directing its jets at an angle.

The VALKYRIE 2014 Expedition proved the laser-powered cryobot concept. Photo Credit: Stone Aerospace

Last year’s mission (also on the Matanuska, I was not present) was all about proving the basic physical concept of VALKYRIE. The Stone Aerospace team was able to show that the concept works well, penetrating 30m down into the ice, with nothing stopping going deeper except that we came to the end of our fiber optic cable for the laser. Importantly, the hot water jets dealt effectively with the problem of sediment buildup at the bottom of the hole, and we were even able to try some basic lateral maneuvers using the side jets, although it didn’t work as well as we’d hoped (we ended up cutting “mickey mouse ears” using the side jets, instead of one side channel we could turn into). But with some reconfiguration of the side jet geometry, in the future we should be able to turn in ice to avoid obstacles or angle towards targets of scientific interest that will be identified by ice penetrating radar incorporated on the robot. We did not have any major science instruments aboard VALKYRIE last year, as the expedition was about physical proof of concept.

This year, the primary objective is to test the brand-new “science package” aboard the vehicle – a water sampling system that can redirect the melt water into sample bags or filters for the glaciologists to analyze upon return to the surface, and a flow cytometer, which analyzes the florescence spectrum of contaminants in the melt water and can determine the amount of minerals, bacteria, and chlorophyll proteins that are encased in the slice of glacier ice the robot is traveling through. The flow cytometer can also be used to autonomously trigger the water sampling system if it sees something interesting – a very early precursor of decision-to-sample and autonomous intelligence a penetrator robot on Europa will need, where no group of scientists can look over its shoulder to give directions in real time (it takes 30 min – 1 hour just for radio waves to travel from Jupiter to Earth, depending on the alignment of their orbits). These new instruments are encased in their own separate pressure vessels, and were added to the top of the robot, so VALKYRIE is now getting quite tall!

Bart and David hoist the robot vertical in preparation for ice block testing

I am able to do most of my software work remotely from California, but a few weeks ago, I made my ~tri-weekly trip back to Stone Aerospace headquarters in Austin with two goals in mind: to assist the final hardware/software integration of the “science package” onto the robot, and to simulate a VALKYRIE mission by melting the robot into a big block of ice in lab. The simulation served three purposes: to make sure that all the hardware systems that worked last year still work now (and will not lead to a nasty surprise on the glacier), to test the new systems, and to get me up to speed on the quirks of last year’s software, so I can operate the robot and fix any bugs that may arise on the glacier. Although I have been the main software developer for the new science package, I did not have a hand in creating the previous VALKYRIE software, so Chris “Bacon Boy” Flesher imparted to me his wisdom.

The tests went well. We integrated the science package on to the robot, everything worked (old and new), and we were even able to fix a long-standing electrical problem where the jet pumps were injecting high-frequency noise into the robot chassis, causing some of our sensors to sporadically and temporarily stop streaming data. In the middle, we weathered out a tornado warning in Bill’s basement, and I saw more rain than I’ve ever seen before, due to the historic Texas flooding. When I left, the rest of Austin-based team was packing the robot and the final items into the U-haul bound for Alaska. Josh and Vickie will drive it North, and several other team members will fly up to assist with basecamp set-up and logistics. Some other Stone engineers, scientists from various universities, and I will fly up to join them on June 15th. The next time VALKYRIE will touch ice will be on the Matanuska!

Beautiful clouds over Stone Aerospace headquarters after the storm had passed.

Also, a new article about the 2015 VALKYRIE expedition has come out on Space.com! You can check it out here.

Reporting by Evan Clark

Robots, Lasers, Glaciers… What?

The Matanuska Glacier, Alaska. Photo credit: Kamal Singh

Well, where to begin?

This is the first in a series of blog posts to cover the Stone Aerospace 2015 VALKYRIE expedition on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. We’ll be testing a laser-powered cryobot that will penetrate into the glacier, so that one day we may explore the oceans of Europa, for science.

Whoa there! What’s that you say? Alright, backing up. What even is a cryobot, where is Europa, and why would we want to melt into this beautiful glacier anyway?

A cryobot is a robot that can move through solid water-ice using heat to melt the ice and gravity to sink downwards. You can see a (somewhat old) summary of our cryobot, named VALKYRIE, here. As you can imagine, cryobots are not a very common type of robot, but scientists sometimes tinker with them to try to study glaciers, ice sheets, or bodies of water trapped below the ice (sub-glacial lakes or rivers), because they are more sterile, mechanically simpler, and have less breakage problems than drills. They are also sometimes called Philberth probes, and actually have a fascinating history dating back to the late 1960’s and a pair of German brother priests/physicists named Bernhard and Karl Philberth, who had the crazy idea to use them to sequester nuclear waste beneath the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets during the height of the Cold War (to read more, see this Wired article).

Were it not for an enigmatic moon of Jupiter, cryobots would probably forever remain a footnote in history. But now it’s time to introduce you to Europa.

Europa is the sixth moon of Jupiter and one of the most promising places in the Solar System to look for extraterrestrial life. Below the thick ice crust lies a salty water ocean. Photo credit: NASA/JPL

Europa is the sixth moon of Jupiter and one of the most promising places in the Solar System to look for extraterrestrial life. Why is it so promising? The answer, in short: liquid water. When searching beyond our planet for life, NASA’s unofficial mantra long been “follow the water”. This is because, basically without exception, wherever we find liquid water on Earth, we find life*. The conditions can be hellacious – above boiling, below freezing, extreme pressure, more acidic than a car battery – yet somehow, so long as liquid water is present, life manages to make a home.

Europa has liquid water, and a lot of it. Underneath its icy crust, scientists believe there is a salty liquid water ocean with 3 times the volume of Earth’s ocean. This water is kept liquid by tidal heating between Jupiter and Europa. Jupiter is massive, so it has a huge amount of gravity, and Europa has a very elliptical orbit around Jupiter. As the moon swings closer and further away from its planet, the gravitational forces are strong enough to stress and strain the moon itself, and the friction of the repeated tidal flexing heats up the interior, and melts the lower layers of ice. All this flexing of Europa’s mantle means there are likely hydrothermal vents at the bottom of Europa’s ocean, which is where many scientists believe abiogenesis (the origin of life) first occurred on Earth. Furthermore, scientists believe Europa has an active surface-ocean exchange of both oxidants and simple organic molecules created when charged particles are accelerated in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, then slam into Europa’s surface. These molecules could provide a Europan ecosystem with both the building blocks and an energy source for life.

July 2014 cover of National Geographic Magazine. Photo Credit: NGM

So, we have all the necessary ingredients – liquid water, energy sources, the building blocks for life, and a habitable environment. The living conditions in Europa’s ocean may be no harsher than the conditions under Antarctica’s ice shelves – and we know that ecosystems can thrive there. Scientists are really, really excited about the possibility of exploring Europa for life, but so far we have been limited to Mars because it is technologically much easier to explore (because you don’t have to penetrate the ice crust). But recently Europa has been picking up steam. The moon was prominently featured on the cover article of National Geographic’s July 2014 issue, Life Beyond Earth, and for the first time this year, NASA’s budget includes money to begin transforming long requested mission concepts into a real mission, Europa Clipper.

Europa Clipper won’t land, instead it will perform dozens of up close fly-bys of Europa with instruments to characterize the ocean, ice surface, and scout potential places to land. It’s an extremely exciting first step, it will teach us a ton about Europa, and it paves the way for an eventual lander mission which could pierce through the icy crust to get at the juicy stuff underneath.

So that brings us to the final question – what on Earth are we doing running around on this glacier anyway? The answer is: testing an early stage prototype robot funded by by NASA, whose descendant may one day be able to investigate Europa’s ocean**. In the meantime, we’ll be doing some wicked cool glaciology here on Earth, and trying out some brand new ways to get in situ scientific data from our planet’s rapidly retreating glaciers and ice sheets, which could have important implications for climate science.

Stay tuned for more.

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*This is not quite true, you also need a source of free energy, and a suite of “biogenic elements” (e.g. carbon). On Europa, the biogenic elements could be provided by organic molecules created by ice surface interactions with ions accelerated by Jupiter’s magnetosphere, subsequently recycled into the ocean, and energy could be provided through oxidation of these and other molecules, or other chemotrophic pathways similar to those seen in hydrothermal vent communities on Earth.

**Actually there’s a number of icy moons in our solar system that harbor sub-surface oceans or lakes, and could be good targets for cryobot probes. Some recent examples that have been in the news are Enceladus, which harbors active water-ice geysers, and Ganymede whose ocean was recently discovered by watching auroras (how cool is that?!).

Reporting by Evan Clark