Weighing about 550 pounds, the six-foot-long Orpheus drone cost nearly $2 million to build and was named for the Greek poet and prophet. The main goal for this next-generation mini-submarine that was engineered and constructed by WHOI in Massachusetts, will be to increase our knowledge of the deepest areas of our planet’s oceans known as the hadal zone.
This exotic region is represented by radical trenches and troughs as deep as 20,000 to 36,000 feet, replicating challenges and conditions that might pop up while investigating watery environments on other planets and moons.
"There are quite a few similarities between Earth's deep ocean and space exploration," said JPL roboticist Russell Smith during a May 5 virtual press conference regarding parallels that include "data-constrained communication, requiring a lot of autonomy, but also challenging environmental conditions that require a lot of engineering work to deal with."