It is no small undertaking to design and build a 25-foot-long underwater robot, launch it through a narrow hole drilled through 20 feet of sea ice, allow it to maneuver autonomously through several kilometers of Antarctic Ocean for hours at a time and program it to pilot itself back to within a few feet of where it started. The simple part is that it at least takes place on planet Earth.
A Robotic Rehearsal for Interplanetary Exploration
