Space pioneer: The ENDURANCE robot will dive to the bottom of an Antarctic lake this month. Such tests fuel research into future space-based robots that could one day explore oceans on other planets.
Credit: John Rummel, NASA
When they do, the first scientists will be thrilled just to take samples. But soon enough, they'll want to explore. And that's where ENDURANCE's experience at Lake Bonney comes into play.
Lake Bonney is shallow (40-metre-deep) and a relatively easy place from which to retrieve a wayward probe.
In Lake Vostok, retrieval would be well-nigh impossible. ENDURANCE itself is too big, and not strong enough, to be sent though a borehole into Lake Vostok. But it does provide a way of testing the systems that would guide and power a smaller, hardier probe of the future.
Space: the final target
But even Vostok isn't the ultimate target. It's simply another good springboard for an even more ambitious project: Europa. Scientists are increasingly convinced that Europa has an ocean and that it might be only a few kilometers beneath the surface.
"We think [it's] close enough to the surface to be accessible," said William B. McKinnon, a professor of Earth and planetary science at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri.
And, he noted, astrobiologists think that it might possibly contain (or once have contained) life. "I can't think of any more important question."
Richard A. Lovett is a writer based in the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon. He is a regular contributor to Cosmos.
