NASA lost their rubber ducks!

The US space agency (Nasa) would like its rubber ducks back, please.

Ninety bathtub toys were hurled into a drainage hole on the Greenland ice in September - an experiment to see how melt waters find their way to the base of the ice sheet.
It was hoped the ducks would flow along subglacial channels and eventually pop out into the sea. They may still, but nothing has been seen of them so far.
"We haven't heard anything from them yet," said Nasa's Alberto Behar. "If somebody does find one, it will be a great breakthrough for us."

Dr Behar is a robotics expert with the agency at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He has been studying the tubular crevasses that appear on the surface of the Greenland ice known as moulins.

These "plug holes" can drain vast lakes of melt water that settle on the top of the ice during summer months. Scientists would like to know how and to what extent this water can help lubricate the base of the ice sheet, moving it faster towards the ocean.

If plastic fowl seem a very low-tech way for a man who has also worked on Mars rovers to investigate the problem, it should be stressed he also has a more sophisticated approach.

Dr Behar has been developing a Moulin Explorer, a probe that can travel through the chutes.

An untethered Moulin Explorer probe was released with the rubber ducks.Like the ducks, the Explorer was supposed to pop out somewhere having gone through the subglacial plumbing. It was also supposed to call home.

"We did not hear a signal back so it probably got stuck under the ice somewhere," said Dr Behar. "It was a bit of a long shot but we thought it was worth a try. We've got to go back and scratch our heads and think about what we do next."

And if you are wondering why I posted this in the Space Exploration forum, here is why:

These are early days. In the distant future, the descendents of the Moulin Explorer could be deployed by Nasa on icy moons in the outer Solar System that are thought to harbour subglacial oceans.

news.bbc.co.uk...

So, if you happen to see a little, yellow rubber duck float by, don't take it home to play with it in the bath tube. Contact Dr. Alberto Behar. The rubber ducks have his email address on them.






[edit on 21/12/08 by ziggystar60]

Maybe Santa Claus got them. Economy is bad, ya know

Thanks for the thread. It brightens my day

IMO, little rubber ducks isnt the only thing NASA has lost in the last 30 years!! BTW, isnt this experiment more geared for the environment protection agency or some other environment study group than a space agency?


And they lost what?



Cheers!!!!

reply to post by Deaf Alien


I thought it was just good old NASA losing things again, but hey, you cracked the mystery! Santa has turned bad. Real bad...


Perhaps he has been eating too many of those mushrooms in Zorgon's thread.

reply to post by RFBurns


Well, there are some icy moons out there in space. They are developing methods to study them, it seems.

But this is kind of funny... I never thought I would see NASA looking for rubber ducks!

reply to post by ziggystar60


Well its just my opinion but this study could have been done years ago if they were that concerned about flowing ice.

But hey, they gotta spend the rest of that budgeted 11+ billion per year or loose it.

Maybe they could allocate the left overs to putting a REAL RGB full visiual spectrum camera on them probes and rovers and we can finally get REAL color pictures for once!!!!


Cheers!!!!

wow thanks for the heads up, ok i won't freak out if i see a swarm of this little fellows washed up on our seashore. if i see the rubber duckies float by i'll let them know and you guys as well...

The ducks got tired of waiting for NASA to discover life on other planets. They decided to go and have a look for themselves.

Oh great!

Now we will be seeing threads in A&U or Mythical Beasts saying:

"Alien Duck spotted in my town!"




[edit on 12/23/2008 by greeneyedleo]

UPDATE:

One of NASA's runaway ducks has been seen in Norway, where he tried to rent a sleigh and some reindeers. The Santa imposter had done a good job with his disguise, but sadly his beak - and his size - gave him away. He quickly ran away and disappeared when bypassers pointed out that he was in fact a rubber duck, not Santa...





I wish all the members, Mods and staff at ATS a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Heh good one! I think they are scratching more than their heads trying to figure out which way the ducks went for the winter.



Cheers!!!!

So in a couple hundred years there will be a thread on ATS (I'm sure the site will still be around ) '10,000 year old rubber duck found under melting Greenland ice sheet! - proves Atlantis had indoor plumbing!'

Remember, I posted it first!