NASA Cancels Robot’s Mission Into Volcano

NASA scuttled its Dante mission to explore the inside of an active volcano in Antarctica with a robot, officials said Saturday. The device’s fiber-optic umbilical cord broke.

The mission was called off after scientists concluded they could not repair the break or ship a new cable to the Antarctic site before severe weather set in, said Randee Exler, a spokeswoman at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the project was being directed.

Barbara Selby, another NASA spokeswoman, said getting the new cable to the icy continent could have taken several days.

Despite the cable break, mission director Dave Lavery called the effort an “unqualified success.” He said it demonstrated that scientists could someday control from Earth robots on other planets.

“The disappointment is that we weren’t able to conclude the scientific part of the mission,” said Exler. Scientists wanted to put the robot in the volcano for three days.

The eight-foot robot, named for the 14th-Century Italian writer Dante Alighieri, stalled Friday after descending only 21 feet into the crater of Mt. Erebus.

In Greek mythology, Erebus is the last stop before Hades.

Controlling the half-ton machine from a hut about a mile from the volcano, scientists had hoped to lower it 700 feet down the side of the crater. They will retrieve it before leaving Antarctica, Exler said.

Scientists initially thought the problem was caused by a computer that controls the robot, but later discovered a break in the fiber-optic cable, Selby said.

She said the cable, which cannot be easily spliced, apparently was kinked at several points as it was unrolled, and the break occurred at one of those points.

Because of increasingly severe weather, scientists have to complete the project and leave the area by Jan. 15, she said.

In the first session of satellite monitoring Saturday, scientists at Goddard got a relatively dull view of the mountain from a camera in the hut. Before the craft stopped moving on Friday, they had been viewing scenes from a camera attached to the robot. Dante remained perched 21 feet in the crater.

Dante, laden with scientific gear and cameras, was to have started its venture into the volcano’s crater Thursday morning. But weather and the restive volcano interfered.

A minor eruption shook Mt. Erebus as Dante sat at the rim of the crater Thursday. The robot was not damaged, but clouds of gases made it difficult to see.

NASA scientists decided to wait until the air cleared before allowing the robot to lower itself on the fiber-optic umbilical 700 feet down the side of the crater.