Jan 3 1993
From The Space Library
The project to send the eight-foot-high, 1,000-pound robot Dante to explore Mount Erebus, an active volcano in Antarctica, was aborted a day after the robot started down the volcano. The robot had gone about 21 feet into the volcano when a communications cable linking the machine to its control station broke. NASA scrubbed the mission after it had been deter-mined that repairs to the damaged cable could not be made in time for the mission to be completed before severe weather set in.
NASA said that its mission to send a robot into an Antarctic volcano had opened the way for exploration of the Moon and Mars. Despite the fact that the mission had to be aborted, David Lavery, director of the Dante project, noted that the objectives of controlling the robot from afar and testing sophisticated hardware in a harsh environment had been met.
The $2 million Dante project was sponsored by Carnegie-Mellon University and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Backed by NASA and the National Science Foundation, the project was directed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. (B Sun, Jan 1/93; Jan 2/93; AP, Jan 4/93; NY Times, 2/93; W Post, Jan 3/93; W Times, Jan 3/93; WSJ, Jan 4/93)
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