Plus Rodan's robots restore reefs, a cool new app, the city of Troy, and the latest from Mars.

Hi everyone,

I've decided that this will be the last edition of Explore and Observe. As much as I've enjoyed writing the newsletter, it is naturally a side project and I've found it increasingly challenging to put in the time and effort that the project really needs. I'm not sure what the future holds for Explore and Observe but I've been considering other creative projects or possible future incarnations. You will be the first to know if anything else comes of that!

Until then, thank you all for being part of this passion project over the last two and a half years! I really appreciate all the positive support I've received and hope that the newsletter has left some sort of small positive mark on this big unexplored world of ours. 

- Evan

#01 SHIPWRECKED

+ In 1914 Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set sail for Antarctica in a bid to become the first to cross the polar continent. Little did they know, they would instead become famous for markedly different reasons. Their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in sea ice before making landfall and sunk after being crushed by the ice. The story that follows is one of the most iconic stories in polar history and involves years spent on the ice, survival on a remote Antarctic island, and an 800-mile journey across the Southern Ocean in a small open-top boat. The Endurance has long been something of a holy grail for shipwreck hunters due to the amazing story attached to it and its inaccessible location  Despite the difficulties, the wreck was finally found largely thanks to a remarkably accurate position estimate left by the ship's navigator. 

+ Speaking of daring ocean crossings, meet Valeri Minakov and his son, Oleg, who in 1945 became the only Soviets known to have defected to America by crossing the Bearing Strait. The remarkable feat was accomplished using a 14ft kayak made from walrus hide, a bicycle frame, and a 3 horsepower engine.

+ If ships aren't your thing, the search is on for warplanes lost in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

#02 REEFS AND ROBOTS

+ "Rodan seems undaunted by the challenge he's set himself. Finding problems and solving them, no matter how large, is what drives engineers, he says." Which is totally something Steve would say! I'm beyond thrilled to see all the great work that my former colleague from JPL (and former housemate) is now doing restoring coral reefs in Australia using novel robotic technologies. Keep it up Steve!

#03 THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT

+ I've never featured a phone app before, but a new one called Inua is worth checking out. "The game tells three intertwined stories that are spread out across more than a century in the Canadian far north. That story is inspired by Inuit spirituality, and has been supervised by an Inuit author." It's a fascinating example of how to use technology and storytelling to teach about exploration and the native cultures that expeditions often encountered.

#04 TROY

+ "The last stretch of my journey began in a traffic-snarled resort town by the name of Canakkale, on the eastern shore of the Dardanelles Strait in northwestern Turkey. After a six-hour drive from Istanbul, I inched my rental car through the crowded city center, lined with fish restaurants and boutiques selling clothing and sunglasses. When I finally made it onto the highway and sped south, the landscape opened into a vista of agricultural fields, office parks and the occasional mosque. Now and then the mile-wide sparkling blue expanse of the Dardanelles came into view. Half an hour later, near where the strait empties into the Aegean Sea, I spotted a sign announcing my exit: Troia." Meet the archaeologists separating fact from fiction by excavating the legendary city of Troy. 

#05 STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS

+ I appreciate it when organizations are willing to talk about things when they don't go quite right. Last November, the deep-sea crewed submersible Alvin, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanic Institute, was going through sea trials after a significant rebuild. The trials came to an abrupt halt when cracks were noticed in the submersible's syntactic foam (a rigid material that gives deep water submarines the buoyancy they need). It appears that some of the foam was overconstrained, and wasn't able to expand or contract as needed with the significantly changing pressure. Corrections to the design are in work, expect to see Alvin back in the water sometime in May or June.

#06 LATEST FROM MARS

+ The Perseverance rover has collected its 7th rock sample from the red planet and is now on its way towards an ancient river delta.

+ Not to be outdone, the Ingenuity helicopter completed its 21st flight on the red planet and was recently described as "as good as new" despite significantly outliving its 30 days warranty.

That's all! Thanks for being one of those subscribers who reads all the way to the bottom. I really appreciate it!

- Evan Hilgemann