Aliens of the Deep Page #9

- It's just like a burning tree stump,

That is just incredible,

OK, it looks like most of the fluid

is coming out here and here,

Can we go in right there?

I will do the best I can,

but I'm working really hard,

We're in some kind of

convective flow here,

We're in there now,

You wanted close, we're close,

Be careful,

Looks like he's hit a blowtorch, doesn't it?

Think he's getting hit,

Mike, back up, back up, You got the top of

the 'bot is right in the vent fluid, Over,

Can you see if I'm in the hot water?

You really want to know?

Nice, Mike,

Just be the 'bot, Mike, Be the 'bot,

Stay calm, you got it,

Yeah, I'm gonna

just do this as quick as I can,

- Oh, yes!

- I think we got it, I think we got it,

Hey, we gotta just go cap this sample,

We just poked it right into the chimney,

Yeah, copy that, Congratulations,

Go back and cap it,

Roger that,

Coming home,

- Yeah,

- Look at...

Jake took some hits,

Other than the damage here

and here, it looks in pretty good shape,

Yeah, that was pretty fun,

Pretty intense,

Diving with Mike was great fun.

He is a mastermind with the robot.

I didn't realize how much

went into making that 'bot work right.

All right, it needs to come up,

A little more, Pete,

The 'bot had to be small

so that it could fit on the MIR.

It had to have

its own onboard power supply.

...back to neutral and we're ready to go,

Inside the sub,

I have a laptop and a joystick,

and that's all I have inside the sub.

The fiber is unique.

It allows us to send

a light pulse back and forth to the vehicle.

That's how we talk to the vehicle.

And we can control

the little camera as well.

The 'bot creates

a telepresence for us.

It actually allows us to feel

like we're outside of the submarine.

- All right, I'm gonna get a little bit closer,

- Oh, he's beautiful,

I never saw anything

like this, Look at that,

Uh-oh, he sees us now,

Hey, hey, hey!

He's going after you!

Look, look, look,

he's grabbed the gripper,

He's putting his tentacles on the gripper,

This is cool,

Who's grabbing who?

That was incredible,

It deliberately reached straight out

and probed the gripper,

I've never had

an encounter like that with the ROV,

with an animal that came right up

to us and touched the ROV like that,

It was an extraordinary encounter.

It was as though

I got to shake hands with an alien.

As an underwater explorer,

that was probably one of the highlights

of my whole experience underwater.

It's not hard to imagine

that someday it would be possible

to explore oceans on another world.

So getting an idea

of what it's like to explore

these extreme environments

on our own planet

could very well

pave the way to exploring Europa.

A mission to explore

under the ice of Europa

would be the ultimate

robotic challenge.

During the landing,

the team in mission control

would pretty much

be along for the ride.

Europa is so far away,

that even at the speed of light

it would take more than an hour

for a command just to reach the vehicle.

It's really on its own.

It has to be smart enough

to avoid terrain hazards,

and to find

a good landing site on the ice.

Now we have to get through the ice.

You need a melt probe.

It's basically a nuclear-heated torpedo.

The ice could be anywhere

from three to sixteen miles deep.

Week after week, the melt probe will sink

of its own weight through the ancient ice.

Until finally...

Now, what are you gonna do when

you reach the surface of that ocean?

You need an AUV,

an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.

It needs to be one smart puppy,

able to navigate and make decisions

on its own in an alien ocean.

Europa has internal heat.

It may well have hydrothermal venting.

If it does,

and if the chemistry is right...

It will have an enormous impact on humanity

if we find life

in an ocean on another world.

But in order to find it,

we have to go there.

And to go there,

we have to continue the journey here.

Exploration is like a muscle. You have

to exercise it to make it stronger.

And if water is

the common ingredient for life,

we need to take what we know

about deep ocean exploration

and apply it to space, giving scientists

and explorers the experience they'll need

to follow the water,

wherever it might be.

Discovering life at the vents

shows us that nature has more to teach us

than we can possibly imagine.

But I wonder,

what would it be like

if we were exploring

the ocean on another world?

- All stop,

- Stopping,

Hold it steady here,

It might completely

change our definition of life.

Let's see what they do,

Right on,

Houston, "Endurance." We have arrived

on station at the coordinates,

and we have some new friends.

Who knows what's out there?

So we have to go.

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