All robots are present and accounted for. The two Carbon Flux Explorers launched yesterday and the day before were recovered today, including CFE-Cal 2 with its experimental sample collection system.
When the latter robot was inspected on deck, the researchers were initially disappointed to see that a tube meant to direct particles into the tray had become disconnected. If the separation occurred soon after its deployment, there would be no samples to show for its time at sea. Read More »
Meet the Gremlin. Several years ago, Jim Bishop found him in a toolkit that came with a box of new particulate inorganic carbon (PIC) sensors used on the CTD Rosette. The figurine was a joke, apparently added to the box of spare parts by the sensor manufacturers.
The Gremlin gets the blame when equipment and electronics don’t perform as expected, and the cause is unclear. For example, a key GPS system failed that stopped many of the ship’s scientific sensors, and it took hours of head scratching to figure out what had happened. Read More »
There’s a mixture of relief and joy every time a robotic float is recovered. Years of research and months of intense engineering go into preparing each device for its life at sea, no matter how brief the stint. So when Carbon Flux Explorer 3 sent its ping this afternoon to say that it had surfaced and completed its mission, a day after it was first dropped into the Santa Cruz Basin, the reaction was one of excitement and anticipation.
Even with the GPS signal, it’s an impressive feat to find and retrieve the float. It is a small target in a large ocean, and the two antennae are black. The people who first saw the robotic float were instructed not to blink. Read More »
The ocean’s biological carbon pump occurs at very fast time scales, so it has been difficult to study the various environmental dynamics influencing its processes. Determining whether the carbon pump is strengthening or weakening – and why – would require ongoing monitoring that is impractical to do for humans on a ship.
That is where robotic technology comes in. Berkeley biogeochemist Jim Bishop invented the optical sedimentation recorder (OSR), an instrument designed to catch organic matter sinking vertically and funnel it to a glass platform. A camera below the platform takes images at regular intervals, and those images can determine the nature of the matter that settles on the glass stage.
The OSRs typically hang down from surface buoys, but research has indicated that such tethering makes them susceptible to a sideways pull that affects the quantity of particles collected. Read More »
At 2:27 p.m. today, the first Carbon Flux Explorer was deployed, and if all goes well, we will see it again in about 24 hours. Its entry into the water did not come with the cheers I had expected. I was told that this was because many of the researchers had done this before, and there was still a great deal of work to do after the launch. (I still clapped.)
While the float was on the boat, the researchers programmed in a 30-minute delay in activation so that it wouldn’t start sinking right after deployment. What followed after the Carbon Flux Explorer (CFE) was dropped into the water was a meditative half hour of watching the float bobbing along the water’s surface to make sure it sinks as scheduled. Read More »
A U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory Managed by the University of California