Submarine

In what seems like a remarkably obvious move, ESA is working with the Portuguese Space Agency and the Portuguese Navy to use life aboard a naval submarine to learn more about the effects of isolation during long-term space missions.

It’s entirely possible that micro-machines could one day be delivering drugs inside the body, with many designs proposed in recent years. The latest comes from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), which gets around under its own power using a system similar to how submarines rise and sink.

Saturn’s moon Titan is very Earth-like, with lakes and oceans, but instead of water, those seas are composed of liquid methane and ethane. Now, scientists at NASA and WSU have recreated that alien ocean in the lab, to test out designs for submarines that may one day dive into the Titanic depths.

When people are attempting to clean up oil spills at sea, one of the key things they need to know is the amount of oil that's been spilled. In order to make that process easier, scientists have developed an ROV that does the job by measuring the thickness of oil slicks from below the surface.

A NASA study of the Titan Submarine Phase I Conceptual Design outlines a possible mission to Saturn's largest moon, Titan, where the unmanned submersible would explore the seas of liquid hydrocarbons at the Titanian poles.

Octopi can rapidly accelerate by sucking in and then expelling water. An international team of scientists have now replicated that system in a soft-bodied miniature underwater vehicle, which could pave the way for very quickly-accelerating full-size submersibles.

Curious about what's living on the deep sea floor? Well, the Autosub6000 AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) is helping us find out. It's claimed to be far more effective at identifying deep-sea life than the usual approach of scientific trawling.

Scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have devised a system that allows an underwater camera to look up through the surface from below, with a minimum of distortion. In some situations, it could be used to replace periscopes on submarines.

Scientists have replicated a system used by the blind cave fish, to create a sensing system for autonomous underwater vehicles.

The AquatiCo project would allow computer users anywhere in the world to control an actual ocean-based submarine over the internet.

Scientists have created nanoscale submarines, for use in gathering up oil droplets in the event of oil spills.

Scientists have developed a CO2-scrubbing system for submarines, that utilizes seawater and tiny wire mesh rings.