The first unmanned, underwater robot or glider Scarlet Knight maneuvers through the dangerous opposing and circular currents in swirling eddy fields of the Atlantic Ocean to collect data below the waves where satellites cannot see. A satellite communication system in the tailfin sent data to scientists each time the robot surfaced. The data fed a national information network, the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System.

Robotic gliders allow researchers to collect data in severe weather conditions without risking lives. In 2009 Hurricane Bill passed to the north during the Scarlet Knight’s mission, producing large waves that battered the glider and challenging scientists trying to reach it for an inspection. Following the path of Christopher Columbus’s Pinta, the Scarlet Knight crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Baiona, Spain, on Dec. 9, 2009, becoming the first unmanned robotic glider to cross an ocean basin.

Scientists met the robotic glider Scarlet Knight about halfway along its journey of scientific exploration from the United States to Spain, discovering that barnacles were growing on the glider’s body, as this graphic illustrates. As algae began to grow on the glider’s exterior surface, small sea creatures attached, attracting larger ocean predators that could damage the glider. Scarlet Knight is the first underwater robotic glider to complete a trans-Atlantic mission.