14 DAY TRIAL // The Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctiC Explorer (ENDURANCE) is a submarine device financed by NASA and designed by William Stone, the president of Stone Aerospace Corporation in Austin, Texas. It is conceived in order to explore otherwise unreachable, tremendously cold waters under thick layers of ice, gather samples and data, map regions, and then find its own way back.
Scientists even dare to hope that it could one day tell us more about mysterious formations like the immense ocean that is believed to be hiding beneath a massive ice crust on Jupiter's moon Europa. But until that, it still has to pass a series of tests. Currently, it is scheduled to perform more thorough measurements on the six-kilometer long, 900-meter wide Lake Bonney in the Dry Valleys, constantly covered by meters of ice.
While the $2.3 million device has to be able to find its own route and return safely, there's a back-up plan in order to retrieve it from lake bottoms if something goes wrong. But that was not the case so far, and its electronic parts proved to be perfectly resistant to the extremely low temperatures. The next target is a lot tougher, though. It involves lake Vostok, which is among the world's greatest, deepest, and most mysterious lakes, lying under 3.5 km of ice. The submarine uses hot water to drill a hole into the crust and get to the freezing waters.
Although specialists dream of a time when ENDURANCE probes the oceans of Europa, there are a lot of aspects to think about. First and foremost, there is no certainty related to that ocean. It is only believed that it may hide under kilometers of ice (which also have to be drilled). Secondly, ENDURANCE is still too large to be carried that far into space. Perhaps a smaller, improved version of it will eventually do the trick.