Pavilion Lake Research Project

After a successful initial field season at the lake in 2004, Dr. Darlene Lim (SETI/NASA Ames Research Center) established the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) in partnership with Dr. Bernard Laval (University of British Columbia).

The project also successfully acquired a National Geographic Research and Exploration Grant in 2005, and NASA continues to provide logistics, and education and public outreach (E/PO) support to the PLRP mission.

While the lake is not a close physical analog to the Moon or Mars or an asteroid, the complex operations of the field team and back room in dealing with communications, power, safety, etc., make the project an excellent operational analog.

[2] For the last several field seasons, the PLRP has used Deepworker submersibles to enable the scientists to map and explore the deepest parts of the lake, and cover much more area underwater than was previously possible with scuba divers.

Deepworker is equipped with HD video cameras, so the scientists who make observations underwater can compare their observations with back room scientists after their dive, and a sampling arm, allowing microbialite retrieval from the deepest depths of the lake.