Schematic of JASON
Schematic of JASON
Jason is deployed off the rear of a ship,as shown in this concept drawing of the ARGO/JASON Project, showing a mothership deploying a sled with sonar sensors and with a rear garage to deploy an ROV:
and then descends to the depths to carry out its missions. One such deployment is shown here, where JASON is deployed in the Meditteranean in the summer of 1988 to look for roman shipwrecks an underwater volcanoes. If you look real closely, you might even recognize me in the picture ----^ !!
The most interesting all-encompassing mission that JASON accomplished while I was at the Deep Submergence Laboratory, was the use of JASON in the archeological exploration and revoery mission of roman shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. JASON was deployed from a ship and carefully watched and operated using the on-board and the eye-in-the-sky ARGO-cameras to navigate. The mission was to recover artifacts such as amphorae, and bring them to the surface for archaeological studies.
In the picture below, you see the JASON robot in transit between the wreck site and the retrieval elevator, carrying an amphora in the specially-designed gripper at the end of the MEDUSA manipulator.
