Mt. Erebus is at the end of our world -- and offers a portal to another.
It's our planet's southernmost active volcano, reaching 12,448 feet (3,794 meters) above Ross Island in Antarctica. Temperatures at the surface are well below freezing most of the year, but that doesn't stop visits from scientists: Erebus is also one of the few volcanoes in the world with an exposed lava lake. You can peer over the lip of its main crater and stare straight into it.
Mt. Erebus is at the end of our world -- and offers a portal to another.
It's our planet's southernmost active volcano, reaching 12,448 feet (3,794 meters) above Ross Island in Antarctica. Temperatures at the surface are well below freezing most of the year, but that doesn't stop visits from scientists: Erebus is also one of the few volcanoes in the world with an exposed lava lake. You can peer over the lip of its main crater and stare straight into it.
t's also a good stand-in for a frozen alien world, the kind NASA wants to send robots to someday. That's why Aaron Curtis, a post-doctoral scholar at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, spent the month of December exploring ice caves beneath the volcano. For several weeks, he tested robots, a drill and computer-aided mapping technology that could one day help us understand the icy worlds in our outer solar system.
Continue reading at NASA.
Photo via NASA.
