Jason Junior, also called JJ, was a small remotely operated vehicle

Remotely operated vehicle

A remotely operated vehicle is a tethered underwater vehicle. They are common in deepwater industries such as offshore hydrocarbon extraction. An ROV may sometimes be called a remotely operated underwater vehicle to distinguish it from remote control vehicles operating on land or in the air. ROVs...

 (ROV) designed and built by the Deep Submergence Laboratory at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). Jason Jr. was a prototype for a larger, more capable ROV named Jason, which was being developed to complement the Argo unmanned undersea video camera sled.

Jason Jr. was first used in the exploration of the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1986, during which it was attached to and controlled from aboard the DSV Alvin

DSV Alvin

Alvin is a manned deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The vehicle was built by General Mills' Electronics Group in the same factory used to manufacture breakfast cereal-producing...

, a United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 manned deep-ocean research submersible

Submersible

A submersible is a small vehicle designed to operate underwater. The term submersible is often used to differentiate from other underwater vehicles known as submarines, in that a submarine is a fully autonomous craft, capable of renewing its own power and breathing air, whereas a submersible is...

 operated by WHOI. The ROV was connected to the submersible by a 300 feet (91.4 m) fiber optic cable, and allowed scientists to explore and photograph areas of the shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

 that the submersible could not access. The ROV was deployed from a metal cage attached to the front of the Alvin, and controlled remotely by a pilot inside the submersible.

Jason Jr. was lost at sea in late 1991, when a barge carrying it and other equipment to the Galápagos Islands

Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part.The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a...

 sank in the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

during the Jason III expedition.

External links

• Ships & Vehicles Used in 1986 Discovery of Titanic