NASA JPL Developing Underwater Robots to Venture Deep Below Polar Ice | Space

Called IceNode, the project envisions a fleet of autonomous robots that would help determine the melt rate of ice shelves.

On a remote patch of the windy, frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California huddled together, peering down a narrow hole in a thick layer of sea ice. Below them, a cylindrical robot gathered test science data in the frigid ocean, connected by a tether to the tripod that had lowered it through the borehole.

This test gave engineers a chance to operate their prototype robot in the Arctic. It was also a step toward the ultimate vision for their project, called IceNode: a fleet of autonomous robots that would venture beneath Antarctic ice shelves to help scientists calculate how rapidly the frozen continent is losing ice — and how fast that melting could cause global sea levels to rise.

If melted completely, Antarctica’s ice sheet would raise global sea levels by an estimated 200 feet (60 meters). Its fate represents one of the greatest uncertainties in projections of sea level rise. Just as warming air temperatures cause melting at the surface, ice also melts when in contact with warm ocean water circulating below. To improve computer models predicting sea level rise, scientists need more accurate melt rates, particularly beneath ice shelves — miles-long slabs of floating…