NASA Robot Melts Arctic Ice in Test

Posted by tourdemars to Scout Missions at January 14, 2002 12:00 PM

A hot-nosed robot melted its way 75 feet into an Arctic glacier in a test of NASA technology that one day could probe for life deep under ice on Earth, Mars and Jupiter's frozen moon Europa. The cylindrical Cryobot - its copper tip heated to temperatures up to 195 degrees - took four days to bore into the glacier on the island of Spitsbergen, north of the Arctic Circle. "It was basically like a hot iron against the ice," said Lloyd French, who was among scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology involved in October's test.