NASA Robot Resumes Trek From Volcano
A robot exploring the inside of an active Alaskan volcano began walking again Thursday after its remote power supply was fixed by engineers, scientists said.
The eight-legged Dante II robot had started to climb back up the inside of the Mt. Spurr volcano, 90 miles west of Anchorage, Wednesday after completing its science mission when it suffered a loss of power, they said.
It spent the night and part of Thursday stranded some 600 feet below the rim of the crater.
Engineers, flown by helicopter to examine a generator near the volcano rim which supplies power to the robot, managed to repair the problem, said Butler Hine, a project scientist.
“Power came back up. It (the robot) has resumed the walk up the mountain,” he told Reuters.
Hine is one of the scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center near San Francisco who are monitoring the mission via satellite.
NASA, which spent $1.7 million to build the robot, hopes to put its research to use one day by using a robot to explore the moon or Mars.
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