GROVER the Rover: NASA Explores Greenland Ice Sheet with Robot

NASA doesn't only send rovers to Mars; the agency also sends rovers to Greenland. The space agency is testing its newest scientific rover in the highest part of the icy country in order to better understand changes in the massive ice sheet.

The rover itself is known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research. It's actually set to begin testing today, May 3, as it roams the frigid landscape while collecting measurements. In order to conduct these measurements, the autonomous, solar-powered robot carries a ground-penetrating radar to study how snow accumulates over the years as layer upon layer is added to the ice sheet.

Understanding the Greenland ice sheet and its history is more important than ever as temperatures continue to warm across the globe. In fact, Greenland's surface layer vaulted into the news in the summer of 2012 when higher than normal temperatures caused surface melting across a staggering 97 percent of the ice sheet. Actually learning how solid the ice is may allow scientists to predict what kind of melting the ice sheet could see in the future.

"Robots like GROVER will give us a new tool for glaciology studies," said Lara Koenig, a glaciologist at Goddard and science advisor on the project, in a news release.

The ground-penetrating radar that GROVER employs is powered by two rechargeable batteries that rest on the back of the robot. The radar sends radio wave pulses into the ice sheet, and the waves bounce off of the features beneath. This tells scientists about the characteristics of the snow and ice layers, and may allow them to see the history of freezing and thawing in the area.

"GROVER is just like a spacecraft, but it has to operate on the ground," said Michael Comberiate, a retired NASA engineer, in a news release. "It has to survive unattended for months in a hostile environment, with just a few commands to interrogate it and find out its status and give it some directions for how to accommodate situations it finds itself in."

This isn't the only robot that will make its appearance on the ice sheet, though. GROVER will be joined in June by another robot, named Cool Robot, which was developed by Dartmouth College. Cool Robot can tow a variety of instrument packages to conduct glaciological and atmospheric sampling studies.

The data that the two robots collect could help shed light on Greenland's snow accumulation. Scientists plan to compare annual accumulation to the volume of ice lost to sea each year to calculate the ice sheet's overall mass balance and its contribution to sea level rise.