A NASA rover was due to begin roaming the
frigid landscape of Greenland next week, collecting data to help
scientists better understand changes in the massive ice sheet, an
agency spokeswoman said Friday.
The robot carries what NASA described as "ground-penetrating
radar" to study how snow accumulates layer by layer to form the ice
sheet, the agency said.
For the past six months NASA's Mars rover has made headlines with
its exploration of the surface of the Red Planet since landing there
in August. The rover on Greenland has been nicknamed GROVER - an
acronym that stands for Greenland (or Goddard) Remotely Operated
Vehicle for Exploration and Research.
Scientists expect GROVER to detect the layer of the ice sheet that
formed in the aftermath of an extreme melt that took place last
summer when higher-than-normal temperatures caused surface melting
across about 97 per cent of the ice sheet, NASA said in a news
release.
"Robots like GROVER will give us a new tool for glaciology
studies," said Lora Koenig, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and science advisor on the
project.
GROVER was developed by teams of students at summer engineering
intensive study camps at Goddard. A second robot called Cool Robot
and developed at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire will
join it in June bringing more instruments to conduct glaciological
and atmospheric sampling.
The robot is powered entirely by solar energy panels that collect
energy from the sun and sunlight reflected off the ice sheet. Its
ground-penetrating radar sends radio wave pulses into the ice sheet,
and the waves bounce off buried features, informing researchers about
the characteristics of the snow and ice layers.
GROVER will start exploring at a spot where the ice sheet is about
3 kilometres thick. From there it will crawl at an average speed of 2
kilometers per hour. The exploration is scheduled to last through
June 8.
Research with polar rovers costs less than aircraft or satellites,
which are the conventional methods for exploring such environments.
Initially, Koenig's team will communicate with the robot via
Wi-Fi. The researchers eventually will switch to satellite
communications.
Koenig hopes more radar data will help shed light on Greenland's
snow accumulation. Scientists compare annual accumulation to the
volume of ice lost to sea each year to calculate the ice sheet's
overall mass balance and its contribution to sea level rise.
