Exploring the depths of Saturn’s moons

Sometimes, you start building one thing and it ends up as something else.

R/V Robert Ballard - U.E.F. Science Vessel (1)I’ve been having great fun building micro for the last few months, and got out my bins of orange and medium-blue (yes, I sort some of my LEGO by color) because, well, they’re complementary and I hadn’t built anything with them yet.

I loved my tiny science vessel (right), but wanted to do something slightly bigger, in the same scale.

Instead, what came together was a futuristic submersible, which I’ve decided is an Underwater Autonomous Vehicle like ENDURANCE, designed to explore the icy depths of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. In honor of the composer-astronomer who discovered this moon (as well as the planet Uranus) and the explorer who discovered Antarctica, I’m calling it Herschel-Lazerev.

Herschel-Lazarev AUV (1)