NASA robot to be tested in Wisconsin

Madison, Wis. -- A U.S. space agency-funded robotic probe will be tested under ice in Wisconsin to see if it can operate in a similar environment on Jupiter's moon Europa.

Testing of the Environmentally Non-disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer will be conducted this week in Lake Mendota on the campus of the University of Wisconsin.

The $2.3 million probe funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed to swim untethered under ice, creating three-dimensional maps of underwater environments. The probe also will collect data on conditions in those environments and take samples of microbial life. Researchers then plan to ship the probe to a permanently frozen lake in Antarctica for operations later this year.

The robot is being developed and tested for a possible underwater exploration mission on Europa. The probe is a follow-up to the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, a NASA-funded project that completed a series of underwater field tests in Mexico last year.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.