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Saving Sentry

These cruise members, including the Sentry team and the Alvin group—shown during a recent Atlantis cruise near the Galapagos Islands—breathed a collective sigh of relief after a dramatic resuscitation of the AUV Sentry during the cruise. Only about a month after the undersea robot ABE imploded and was lost in the depths, Sentry—the “son” of ABE—suffered fire and flooding that destroyed critical internal components. But a team of engineers rallied to rebuild its electronics at sea and put the vehicle back in the water in four days. The engineers traced the damage to a pinhole fracture in a cable connector allowed seawater into the housing but were able to restore the vehicle in time to resume its work on Atlantis in April. John Sinton from University of Hawaii was the Chief Scientist on the mission.
(Photo by Mark Spear, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)