NASA’s Latest Robot Is Exploring Earth’s Volcanoes

Sure, lava is amazing. But for geologists, a genuine amour lies only subsequent a volcanic surface.

It’s given researchers during NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are building tiny machines, called VolcanoBots, to climb a walls low inside volcanic vents

“We have a good design of what happens once we see an tear start during a surface, though all a problems are subsurface,” Bruce Houghton

In other words, geologists don’t now have an accurate indication of a volcano’s plumbing system. Knowing that information, Houghton said, “would assistance us foresee a form and a figure of a subsequent eruption.”

Carolyn Parcheta, a lead geologist on a project, told The Huffington Post that VolcanoBot has been in prolongation for a year. It’s tranquil as “a child would control an RC car,” she said, with signals sent by her laptop. VolcanoBot is versed with an onboard heat sensor, a short-range stretch sensor that helps it brake, an accelerometer, and wheels embedded with “microspines” to benefit traction opposite rock.

The first era of a VolcanoBot NASA postdoctoral associate during JPLinactive vent

Volcanic conduits typically get broken during eruptions, that means they can’t routinely be measured, though Parcheta found two preserved, dead fissures

“In sequence to eventually know how to envision eruptions and control jeopardy assessments, we need to know how a magma is entrance out of a ground,” Parcheta said.

Using a 3D images, researchers are now creation a map of a crevasse — a initial of a kind.

“This is a first time we have been means to magnitude it directly

VolcanoBot 1, however, ran into some obstacles, customarily that it didn’t pierce as wellthe finish of a tether

Now, a second era VolcanoBot, that is smaller, lighter and stronger than a initial iteration, is prepared to go deeper inside a volcano so that some-more information can be collected.

“Scientists and engineers operative together on such a tiny group is flattering rare,” Parness said, “but has generated lots of good ideas given a perspectives on a problems are so different.”

In early March, a new and softened VolcanoBot 2 will descend Kilauea again

NASA is generally meddlesome in a investigate given it can be practical to supernatural volcanoes

“In a final few years, NASA booster have sent behind implausible cinema of caves, fissures and what demeanour like volcanic vents on Mars and a moon. We don’t have a record nonetheless to try them, though … we’re perplexing to bridge that gap

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/06/volcano-robot-nasa_n_6634248.html?utm_hp_ref=hawaii&ir=Hawaii