Astrum Space - What is NASA Trying to Find at the Bottom of the Ocean? | Astrum Sleep Space

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

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if they could somehow survive being there in the first place. And both contain many, unsolved, captivating mysteries. Our oceans are filled with life we've never seen before. And who can say what lurks in the unexplored corners of space? I was initially caught off guard when I heard that NASA had turned its attention towards exploring the Hidal zones deep in the ocean. After all, NASA is normally about space. What are they doing deep under the water and on Earth? I'm Alex McColgan and you're listening to the Astrum podcast. Put on your diving gear and join me in a world of undersea facilities.

Uncanny life and an environment so hostile, we've mapped more of Mars than of this terrain on our own planet. But before we dive into any of that, here's something that not only helps me sleep, but also helps support the channel. Mantis sleep masks are designed to create a blackout effect, making sure you receive the best sleep possible. They come in a range of different variants,

from their original sleep mask to their pro for comfort and breathability. However, if you love listening to these podcasts, there's also a sound version which will help you fall straight to sleep. Use my link in the description and the code Astrum at checkout to receive 10% of your next order. In 1957, a year before NASA was founded, a paper published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts claimed, the deep oceans covered over two thirds of the surface of the world, and yet more is known about the shape and surface of the moon than is known about that of the bottom of the ocean. This was a reference to the fact that in the world before echo-sounding technology was commonly used to map the seafloor,

we didn't know much about the topography of what was down there. We've come a long way since then. But while we have mapped the moon thanks to satellites and telescopes, we have still only mapped 23.4% of the ocean floor in high resolution. In fairness, this still represents an area of 120 million. square kilometers, about three times the moon's surface area, so the old saying no longer holds entirely true. Hence why we can instead talk of Mars, which has a surface area of 145 million square kilometers, but still, it's a profound gap in our knowledge of our own world. NASA was founded in 1958 with the purpose of expanding human knowledge of phenomena in the

atmosphere and in outer space, and developing vehicles and technologies that would help them to do so. Exploring the ocean was not originally on their radar, or sonar. However, in 1978, NASA began monitoring the ocean with their first dedicated oceanographic satellite, C-Sat, which was capable of collecting data on sea surface winds, surface temperatures, wave heights, and other features. This helped them learn more about our planet's oceans and their impact on the global climate. Still, some of NASA's most exciting forays into the ocean only began at the turn of the millennium. One way in which the sea can prepare astronauts for space is through simulated space experiences. About 8.7 kilometers off Key Largo in Florida is the world's only undersea research laboratory,

Aquarius Reef Base. Built in 1986, it is a small, three-roomed habitat large enough to house six people are to push, with a main room that combines sleeping and living quarters, an entry dock, and a wet porch for entering the sea around it. It was originally designed to help aquanauts remain at the bottom of the sea for weeks at a time through a technique known as saturation diving. By remaining at the depth of 19 meters, a human body becomes saturated with gas dissolved in its bloodstream, which allows these researchers to stay at depth without ill effects for much longer periods of time, nine hours for one dive rather than one or two hours. This made it ideal for biologists wanting to study the local environment in situ.

In 2001, however, NASA, along with other space agencies such as ISA, realized that it made a great space training location. The cramped living conditions mimic those found on the International Space Station, so astronauts who spent a week at Aquarius Reef Base would get a vital taster of what life would be like up there. It also allowed them to practice performing experiments and generally get used to the expected and unexpected aspects of life in a hostile environment. NASA began the Nemo program,

or the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, and that same year began sending their astronauts to the habitat. There have been 23 Nemo missions since then, merging astronaut crews from a variety of different space agencies, which lasted up to three weeks. Astronauts there became aquanauts and got the chance to don deep spacesuits, getting a taste for what spacewalks might be like outside of our planet,

readying them for the day humans return to the moon or go to Mars. This was not the only use NASA had for the ocean, however. Perhaps the most significant training was not for NASA's astronauts, but rather for the machines that would one day visit the largest oceans outside of planet Earth. Let's now go deeper and consider the exploration of alien oceans. Our solar system is home to many large oceans outside of Earth. Earth. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, to name just two, have significant bodies of water beneath their kilometre thick icy surfaces. In spite of only being one-fourth

of the Earth's diameter, scientists believe that Europa holds twice as much water as all of our oceans combined. This is an intriguing concept, as even though no sunlight penetrates down to those steps, the mixture of liquid water bordering a rocky inner crust would make both of these locations ideal candidates for life. Scientists have considered how to best test to see if life really has arisen in the oceans of icy moons. In 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper, with the mission to fly by the moon Europa and scan it to learn more about the depth of its icy shell, to try to determine the composition of its oceans and generally get a better picture of the moon as a whole. However, Europa Clipper will only be

laying the groundwork for future missions, which one day might see cryobots melting through the 10km thick icy shell of Europa using nuclear-powered radiators to penetrate its oceans and see firsthand what lies below. Once down there, no radio signal will be able to reach them easily. Messages will be relayed via a vast cable brought down through the ice along with the cryobot. means that such cryobots will need to be able to autonomously descend a further 100 to 200 kilometers to explore the dark, chilling, and highly pressurized environment they're likely to find, to see what alien life might swim in those waters. So, with a mission objective on the horizon to explore deep, dark waters in search of never-before-seen life, what better place to start

than the unexplored oceans we already have at home? The deepest parts of the oceans on Earth are only 11 kilometres deep, but due to the gravitational differences between Europa and Earth, the pressure you'd experience between the two are much more comparable than you might think. Europa's 100km deep ocean is thought to have a hydrostatic pressure between 130 to 260 megapascals, which, if it existed in an ocean on Earth, would equate to a depth of around 13 to 26 kilometres. This is much better than if you'd had to go hundreds of kilometres down on Earth, but it's still no picnic.

Pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in our ocean, is 1,100 times the pressure on the surface, which is enough to crush the individual cells in the human body, or to implode most submarines. And yet, life survives there, and it doesn't just survive. It thrives. The deep sea explorers of the Galapagos Hydro Thermal Expedition in 1977 were shocked to discover

not a barren wasteland, but thriving ecosystems gathered around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor down there. Tube worms, crabs and fish were found in rich abundance. As scientists performed more dives, they found all manner of strange life forms down there. shrimp like amphipods the size of your hand, giant, ethereal, big, thin squid. Squid that were eight meters long and looked positively alien. In the depths between 6,000 and 11,000 kilometers, in an area known as the Hidal Zone, named after the god of the underworld, Hades, life had learned to adapt to conditions in ways no one could have imagined possible.

And this incredible adaptability gives scientists a better. understanding of what might be possible on other worlds. The deepest parts of the ocean are mostly found near the fault lines of continental plates, where one plate subducks under another. These deep trenches create a unique V-shaped environment that channels organic debris from above down into a sludgy pool. Whenever a carcass falls down there, the organisms in the Hidal zone are somehow able to quickly detect it and arrive within minutes. Other organisms rely on nutrient-rich

liquids pumped out of thermal vents. If you added up all these trenches into one landmass, you would end up with an area the size of Australia, a whole unexplored continent. NASA wants to explore these regions using autonomous drones, perhaps whole swarms of them that would be able to detect locations of interest such as thermal vents and would be able to map out the terrain using cameras and onboard AI, similar to that used by the Perseverance Rover on Mars. It's a challenging task. Not only would such a drone need to be able to withstand the excessive pressure, but the temperature around such thermal vents can spike to hundreds of degrees. Drones would need to be able to survive rapid temperature swings if they are able to survive. In 2014,

One such deep-sea drone known as Nerius was sent into the Kermodeck trench off the coast of New Zealand. This is the area NASA has selected as testing ground for its new equipment. However, sadly, Nerius was not able to survive the press down there, in spite of having succeeded on Hidal dives before, and it imploded. Pieces of plastic were later found floating to the surface. NASA's latest drone is Narius' descendant, a smaller, lighter, autonomous submarine known as Orpheus. Orpheus has yet to enter the depths of the Hidal Zone.

Instead, it is being put through its paces in shallower waters. But if it works, his lighter design would make it easier to transport on a rocket to the oceans of Europa at some point in the distant future. Although, this dream might not be so distant after all. In 2023, NASA's planetary exploration science technology office gathered a team of 40 top researchers from multiple fields in the California Institute of Technology to discuss how close we might be to making this trip. A surprising amount of technology needed is already there. Their conclusion was that the mission was feasible, scientifically compelling, and the most plausible near-term way to directly search for aliens in life in situ on an ocean world. With the combined information being gathered by Europa

Clipper and the technical experimentation being done with Orpheus and other autonomous submarines like it, perhaps it is something we will see within our lifetimes, although no concrete plans have we made yet. When it finally does happen though, and a human-made drone starts to swim in those dark seas across the Gulf of space, what will it see? Perhaps it will. Perhaps it will. it will feel strangely like home. We are water-based life forms here on Earth. The first large, complex animals formed in our oceans, all life is dependent on water to live. Rather than arid, rocky and dusty wildernesses, there will be something strangely soothing about exploring oceans beyond our own, like entering a place we already know, even though we've never been there before. Might it be comforting,

Or might we start to feel excitement and a little fear when something comes swimming out of the darkness? Well, that's all we have time for today. I hope you've enjoyed listening to this podcast on NASA's efforts to explore Earth's oceans. If you like what you've heard, please feel free to follow us for more podcasts on other fascinating space or Earth topics. But for now, I'm Alex McCulligan, and this has been Astrum. All the best, and see you next time. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people

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