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Washington Post Article<br /><br /><font color="orange">It may not show up on MapQuest, but NASA scientists are betting that the best route to Jupiter and its ice-crusted moon Europa runs through an underwater cavern in Mexico.<br /><br />Though the space mission is probably 30 years off, the trek begins in earnest today outside the city of Tampico. A 60-ton crane is scheduled to lower a giant orange robot dubbed "Clementine" into what is believed to be the deepest flooded sinkhole in the world.<br /><br />For the next two weeks, the fully autonomous robot, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a Volkswagen Beetle, will plumb the previously inaccessible microbial mysteries of the sinkhole -- or "cenote" -- El Zacatón.<br /><br />Relying on an eclectic team of scuba divers, engineers, biologists and geochemists, NASA is hoping the mission will be the first leg on its journey to Europa.<br /><br />"We're learning to explore Europa by first exploring a Mexican cenote," said John Rummel, a senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA.<br /><br />The $5 million, three-year Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (Depthx) project is an important test drive of a computerized, underwater vehicle that makes all of its own decisions -- where to swim, which samples to collect and how to get home. Each day, the battery-powered robot will travel deeper into the sinkhole, exploring nooks and crannies that human divers could never reach.<br /><br />If Clementine performs well, a retooled version will head to Antarctica's Lake Bonney next year. Scientists think the conditions there -- vast thermal waterways below frozen ice -- more closely resemble those of Europa.<br /><br />In developing Depthx, engineers aimed to build a machine that behaves like a microbiologist, said John R. Spear, an environmental microbiologis</font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#ff0000"><em><strong>I'm a recovering optimist - things could be better.</strong></em></font> </p> </div>