Robotic Vehicles to Look for Life in Arctic Depths

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has designed three new robotic vehicles for a rare expedition to look for life on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. A 30-member research team will depart with the new vehicles on July 1 to study the Gakkel Ridge, an area that is believed to have been mostly cut off from other ecosystems for at least 26 million years.

Three new robotic vehicles designed by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will embark on an expedition next month to search for life on the Arctic Ocean floor.

The vehicles -- two autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and a tethered, remote-controlled sampling system -- were designed specifically for the challenges of operating in Arctic ice, which can easily crush most small vehicles.

"Anyone can deploy an AUV in the Arctic; the trick is getting it back," said Hanumant Singh, the lead Woods Hole engineer and vehicle developer on the project. "In order to have a good day with autonomous vehicles, the number of recoveries must equal the number of launches."


Icy Depths
The vehicles were successfully tested in May and June with trials in which they were lowered through the Arctic ice and driven underwater, while engineers simultaneously tested acoustic communications techniques. Such maneuvers can be risky because of moving floes that can quickly close the openings in ice around an icebreaker, but the researchers were able to recover their vehicles from beneath the ice.

On July 1, a 30-member research team will depart with the new vehicles from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, for a rare expedition to study the Gakkel Ridge, the extension of the mid-ocean ridge system that separates the North American tectonic plate from the Eurasian plate beneath the Arctic Ocean.

The Gakkel Ridge holds particular interest for scientists because it is believed to have been mostly cut off from other ecosystems for at least 26 million years. Scientists on the project hope to discover exotic ocean-floor life and submarine hot springs in the region.




40 Days

The 40-day expedition, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA , will be conducted on the Oden, a 354-foot icebreaker operated by the Swedish Maritime Administration. It will take researchers close to the geographic North Pole.

The research team includes scientists and engineers from the United States, Norway, Germany, Japan and Sweden.

"This is an exciting opportunity to explore and study a portion of Earth's surface that has been largely inaccessible to science," said Woods Hole geophysicist Robert Reves-Sohn, who is the chief scientist on the project.

"Any biological habitats at hydrothermal vent fields along the Gakkel Ridge have likely evolved in isolation for tens of millions of years," he said. "We may have the opportunity to lay eyes on completely new life forms that have been living in the abyss beneath the Arctic ice pack."



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