NASA helicopters have lowered about a dozen monitoring “spiders” in and around Mount St. Helens’s volcanic crater to better predict major eruptions.
NASA scientists are using high-tech devices placed inside and around the mouth of Mount St. Helens in the hopes they can detect an impending eruption.
Mount St. Helens is one of the most active volcanoes in the U.S.– its most devastating eruption in 1980, and the most recent seen here in 2004.
About a dozen so-called Spiders were placed on Mount St. Helens in July. The pods, designed to go where no human can, were lowered by helicopter inside and around the volcano center.
SOUNDBITE: Steve Chien, Principal Scientist, Autonomous Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
We can detect the differences between snow falling off of a branch, an animal running by, wind, a thunderstorm and the very subtle signatures of magma moving at depth, perhaps even kilometers beneath the surface of the earth.
The pods form a virtual wireless network and communicate with each other and a NASA satellite called Earth Observing-1, or EO-1.
Each pod contains a seismometer, a GPS receiver, an infrared sounder to sense explosions, and a lightning detector.
SOUNDBITE: Steve Chien, Principal Scientist, Autonomous Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
They have the ability to recognize different kinds of events such as seismic events, earthquakes, that are basically indications that something is happening at the volcano.
SOUNDBITE: Sharon Kedar, Geophysicist, NASA /Jet Propulsion Laboratoy
In the context of volcano monitoring, we want to have the best educated guess to make decisions that will save life and properties.
NASA would like to someday use this same technology on the surface of Mars to study atmospheric events like dust storms, which are mini-tornadoes, as well as seismic activity.
