Posted by tourdemars to Scout Missions at January 10, 2002 12:00
PM Robots that melt their way through ice may one day explore
below frozen surfaces of other worlds, based on a pioneering
version that successfully bored into an Arctic glacier in an
adventurous field test. NASA teamed with the Norwegian Polar
Institute and Norwegian Space Center to use the ice-penetrating
robot, or Cryobot, for the first time on a glacier on the island
of Spitsbergen, far above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian-
administered international territory of Svalbad. A mission
proposal called Cryoscout will compete with other Mars Scout
proposals to be chosen by NASA for a 2007 launch to Mars.
Cryoscout is one of 10 Mars Scout concepts selected last year
for further study. It proposes using a Cryobot to descend
through Mars' polar ice cap. "If you want to learn about the
climate history of Mars, which is important in the search for
life, you want to examine the layers of the polar caps, and this
is how you can do it," said Scott Ande