Antarctic Exploration Concept vehicle! June 27, 2005 An innovative concept for an Antarctic Exploration vehicle was unveiled this week at the Royal College of Art's final year show. Working closely with experts from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), award-winning designer James Moon has designed a lightweight, compact eco-friendly vehicle for use in one of the Earth's toughest environments. The vehicle, called "Ninety Degrees South", uses advance technology to keep drivers safe, warm and protected from the high levels of UV exposure that occur under the Antarctic ozone hole. Designed to fit into the small Twin Otter aircraft that BAS uses for working in remote deep field locations, Moon's two-person vehicle has a combination of tracks and wheels allow it to operate anywhere on the continent over hard ground, snow or ice surfaces. The versatility of this concept vehicle has commercial potential. "The challenge was to design an environmentally-friendly vehicle specifically for Antarctica that could be used also in other cold regions," said Moon. "I'm particularly interested in overcoming the dangers of traveling across crevassed areas of ice. Unknown terrain limits the speed of any journey over the ice - the faster you can detect crevasses the quicker you can travel... I'm using unmanned pathfinder technology which travels on a GPS controlled route ahead of the main unit. The pathfinder is secured by a 30m umbilical cord, and uses ground-penetrating radar to assess risk. I believe this technology serves as a prototype for future, entirely automated, expeditions in the Antarctic and on other planets."