Meeting Goal
Planet earth has multiple Arctic marine ecosystem topics of interest that are relevant to inform studies of planetary systems. The purpose of this webinar was to highlight ongoing earth studies in the Arctic that are relevant to understanding planetary ocean worlds that may contain signatures of life. We designed this webinar to have speakers to utilize earth analogs relevant to planetary processes, such as hydrothermal vent activities, cryosphere processes, and technological development, all occurring in Arctic marine ecosystems that can inform off-earth planetary studies to build cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Image: Network for Ocean Worlds
Meeting Materials
- The Buoyant Rover for Under Ice Exploration (BRUIE) as mobility platform for conducting in situ science at the ice-water interface. - Kevin Hand, Jet Propulson Laboratory, Caltech
- Our team has developed a buoyant, two-wheeled rover with an instrumented tail that is capable of non-destructively investigating the ice water interface. We have deployed the rover on many occasions beneath the sea ice and lake ice in the Arctic, and once in the Antarctic. During the 2025-2026 arctic polar winter, BRUIE was deployed under lake ice in the arctic and operated remotely through satellite link for approximately 2.5 month, all the while collecting imagery, CTD, DO, and CH4 measurements. This project has been funded through PSTAR, ASTEP, and NAI programs, as well as with some JPL internal funding.
- Exploring ice-covered oceans, top-to-bottom, with Nereid Under Ice - Christopher German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- The Nereid Under Ice vehicle is one of a family of new vehicles developed at toinvestigate distinct “out of reach” environments. Over a series of 4 expeditions, starting in 2014, we have proven the efficacy of NUI as a lightly-tethered / for a range of under-ice investigations at significant (order 1km) horizontal remove from the operations team aboard the host ice-breaker and to increasing dive-depths. With progressively increasing ambition, we evolved from in situ sensing to study ice-ocean physical and biogeochemical interactions in 2014, to seafloor sampling at a 600m deep seamount in 2016, to 4000m dives in 2019 and combined -mode seafloor surveys and -mode sampling and geological reconnaissance at Arctic seafloor vents in 2023.
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