Site 27: Mdina - A

Our two sites for the day were in the city of Mdina. Mdina is in the center of Malta and is heavily fortified by massive stone walls so it was an incredible experience to see the city from a distance and then explore inside the gates.

The first site was in a private residence where two access points were in a courtyard in the middle of the person's home. We lowered the robot down the first well and found that it was over seventy feet to reach the water. It was difficult to navigate due to loose silt becoming agitated by the thrusters so visibility became very poor, but we were able to capture sonar and SLAM data.

The second access point was slightly smaller than the robot, so we had to remove the sonar module and then re-attach it after passing the robot through the narrow opening all while it was suspended in the air. This second well was completely dry at the bottom, but we captured great video footage of the well walls showing different types of stone the further the robot descended.A short video of what the robot saw during the 2009 expedition can be found here.

Shown below is the sonar data Map image.