NASA is interested in the Antarctic lakes as test beds for future missions to Europa and other icy moons of Jupiter that are believed to harbor underground seas. Antarctica's underground lakes "could shed new light on evolution of life in harsh conditions," Siegert said. "They can also help us understand the extraterrestrial environment of Europa." The British exploration of Lake Ellsworth complements and competes with similar efforts by an Italian team studying Lake Concordia and Russian interest in Lake Vostok, the largest of the buried glacial lakes found so far. The British-backed team has been using explosives for a seismic survey of Lake Ellsworth. Sound waves produced in the blasts travel through the ice and water and bounce back from the lake's floor, painting a picture of the body. If the work is successful, the next step would be to use a hot water drill to bore through the ice and tap the lake so a robotic probe can be lowered into the depths to retrieve water and sediment samples. "There is competition to be the first team to explore a subglacial lake," said John Woodward, with the U.K.'s Northumbria University.
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