IceNode: JPL’s Autonomous Underwater Robots
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are testing a prototype of IceNode, a robot designed to access one of the most difficult-to-reach places on Earth. The team envisions a fleet of these autonomous robots deploying into unmapped underwater cavities beneath Antarctic ice shelves. There, they’d measure how fast the ice is melting — data that’s crucial to helping scientists accurately project how much global sea levels will rise.
The IceNode team took a prototype robot for a test under Arctic sea ice in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, in March 2024.
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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech