Autosub Under Ice

　　The Antarctic adventures of Captain Scott, Ernest S hackleton and Roald Amundsen in the early years of the 20th century still grip the popular imagination.

　　Those expeditions are remembered by most people mor e for their hardship and heroism than their scientific value. Almost 100 years on, a new generation of polar e xplorers is preparing for action.

　　There is no race and little public fanfare(炫耀), onl y pioneering scientific research made possible by groun d-breaking engineering. This time the explorers will no t set foot on the ice. With the help of an intelligent robot submersible(潜艇),they will be looking beneath it.

　　The initiative, called Autosub Under lce, is being run by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and is due to get under way next April. Autosub, the to rpedo-shaped submersible, has been 10 years in developm ent at the Southampton Oceanography Center. Previous un derwater vehicles have either been manned or controlled remotely by scientists on a mother ship, but Autosub is designed to be a loner, working autonomously to a scrip t of preprogrammed instructions. Once in the water, it is almost completely on its own, with the ability to ex plore places no human diver or manned research vessel c ould reach.

　　After a series of successful expeditions over the p ast 18 months, Autosub is now being prepared for a miss ion into the Antarctic sea. However, the ultimate aim i s to explore the waters beneath polar shelves. The ice that floats off the edge of the Antarctic and Greenland can be several hundred meters thick, and what lurks ben eath remains a mystery about which the battery-powered Autosub could provide clues. The submersible is intende d to travel for up to eight days, with a range of 1, 00 0 km and a diving depth of 1, 600 meters.

　　"The scientific merits of the research are indisput able," saysProf. Steve Ackley of Clarkson University, " The ice shelves are substantial players in climate chan ge and we don't know very much about them. This is of h uge scientific value. The idea of going so deep and so far under the ice shelf is unique."

　　By Christine McGourty