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Famous ABE lost at sea

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 10, 2010 at 4:29pm

A sad day for our underwater cousins:


"The ABE (Autonomous Benthic Explorer) has used its on-board acoustic transponders and five thrusters to scan the seafloor for over 15 years - locating, mapping, and photographing hydrothermal vents, volcanoes, and other features of the great deep. Marked with "NCC1701" due to its resemblance to Captain Kirk's ship, ABE has performed more than 200 missions collecting valuable data for researchers worldwide. But something went wrong last Friday on an expedition off the coast of Chile and ABE just stopped - nothing was ever heard again. No word yet on whether ABE can be located or recovered."
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Comments

  • Dana Yoerger March 11, 2010 at 4:40am
    sorry folks, ABE sleeps with the fishes (or more likely, deep sea microbes). We are nearly certain it suffered a complete collapse of all its glass buoyancy spheres (1.8 miles of ocean pressure can do that). You can find more details on our web site: www.whoi.edu
    We had an excellent track on it as it reached the seafloor at 3000m. Then, responses from BOTH acoustic transponders stopped at the same time. This has happened before, but we had always found a problem with our topside navigation gear. Not so this time, all was working fine topside. We carried out an exhaustive search despite that evidence. We never heard from ABE again.
    So, thanks for all your good thoughts. As you guys all know, these things can be rebuilt, better, faster, smarter. That's what we intend to do. I'm heading straight to another cruise with our Sentry AUV.
    Most fanciful explanation: ABE drove into a fantastic hot vent, the heat destroyed the glass spheres. We'll certainly be back to this site off the coast of Chile, then the mystery will be revealed.
  • Alex Arevalo March 10, 2010 at 7:36pm
    Buddhism teaches that attachment is a major cause of suffering because of the principle of impermance. Nothing lasts forever. The universe and every thing in it constantly chaning It's better to try not to get attached to things.
    However, like they used to say when the King died, "Long live the King!". In that spirit, "Long live the ABE!"
  • Bill Porter March 10, 2010 at 7:36pm
    As one of those who work with Navy UUV's, we do feel crappy when we lose one, and embarrassed we lost it. The Navy has lost UUVs before, but are usually found and recovered. The three instances i know of, two washed ashore and where found by bystanders (there's a 'reward if found' sticker on them), and the third was located 8 months later by an emergency pinger still pinging away on it, it was caught under a reef.
  • Ron Jacobs March 10, 2010 at 6:49pm
    Maybe someone should make a device that searches for lost AUVs, UAVs and AVs...it would be a LAVF (Lost Autonomous Vehicle Finder) ;)
  • passunca March 10, 2010 at 5:32pm
    The people who work for so long with autonomous vehicles start to care about them like pets i guess... i hope they find ABE.
    Has anyone ever tried the ardupilot on a AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)? That is also a very cool and challenging area do to some DIY stuff.
  • Developer
    Mark Colwell March 10, 2010 at 5:32pm
    Under sea landslide could be game over! Hope it's just missing...
  • Ryan March 10, 2010 at 5:22pm
    It's not lost, they just don't know where it is :)
  • Admin
    Thomas J Coyle III March 10, 2010 at 5:19pm
    Jason,

    "James Cameron will find it : )" No way, he is still on Pandora.

    Regards,
    TCIII
  • Jason March 10, 2010 at 5:03pm
    James Cameron will find it : )
  • Admin
    Thomas J Coyle III March 10, 2010 at 4:48pm
    Possibly crushed by an underseas landslide? Chile just had a major quake recently!

    Regards,
    TCIII
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