Researchers are celebrating the successful deployment of the University of Tasmania’s stateoftheart Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) nupiri muka in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica in February.

During its second Antarctic summer nupiri muka completed six missions, including a 60kilometre roundtrip along the seafloor beneath a seaice barrier adjacent to Thwaites Glacier, a significant source of Antarctic mass loss and sealevel rise.

Launched from the Korean research vessel Araon, the AUV mapped the inflow of warm water and collected 46 valuable tracemetal free water samples, uncontaminated by metals that would be present if collected from a ship or boat.