The ability to predict volcanic eruptions more accurately is crucial to mitigating damages and saving lives. A robot developed by NASA scientists could eventually affect how experts forecast these potentially deadly volcanic activities.
Getting inside the pits of volcanoes can offer valuable data to researchers, but they do not have to go to the dangerous fissures. NASA's Volcanobots can handle this for them. The small rolling robots were designed to explore volcanic crevices where humans cannot go.
The VolcanoBot1 has in fact already explored an inactive fissure that was created by Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, which has been erupting since 1983. The lava spewed by the volcano has already displaced many families and destroyed structures in Hawaii's Big Island.
The goal of VolcanoBot1's exploration was to come up with a three-dimensional map of the magma inside.
"In order to eventually understand how to predict eruptions and conduct hazard assessments, we need to understand how the magma is coming out of the ground. This is the first time we have been able to measure it directly," said Carolyn Parcheta of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She designed the volcano exploring bot.
The VocanoBot2, which is smaller but more advanced than its predecessor VolcanoBot1, is set to explore the same volcano in March this year. This time, researchers want it to go deeper since VolcanoBot1, which can only go down to a depth of 25 meters, did not make it to the bottom of the fissure.
NASA is interested in knowing how volcanoes erupt and what causes them to become dormant. The crevice set to be investigated by the VocanoBot2 later this year once spewed extremely hot lava but it has now gone cold. Researchers hope that the robot's exploration will shed light on how this became dormant.
It appears that getting to know more about the Earth's volcanoes is not just the intention of the U.S space agency. Findings of the research could also be crucial in space missions, particularly in the planned future missions to planet Mars and the moon, which both have volcanoes.
NASA scientist Aaron Parness said that the agency's spacecraft have been sending photos of caves and fissures of what appear like volcanic vents on the surface of the moon and the Red Planet, but no technology has yet been created to explore them.
NASA could eventually develop specialized robots that would explore the fissures in these extraterrestrial worlds as scientists are curious about the secrets that these may hold.
