Drones Sacrificed for Spectacular Volcano Video National Geographic

it's glimpse into the center of the earth it's like listening to the heartbeat of the planet the physiological effects of being inside the volcano are significant in that you have every forest down there trying to kill you let's use the drone to wanted to share the more impaired that's located in the island nation of Vanuatu by bringing team with me and documenting this place in way that's never been seen the drone that we used is called the phantom 2 Vision+ we had also GoPros mounted on to these particular drones with gimbal devices so that no matter how much they shook the video remains stable we were able to take series of thousands of photographs around the top of the crater and then process those using specialized software to render the first-of-its-kind 3d model of the volcano from inside we were fortunate in that we got the footage we were looking for and unfortunate in the fact that we lost our drones they fell to their demise some into the lava and others just from the incredible amount of heat and unstable air you have sulfur dioxide and toxic gases that are superheated and just an incredible radiant heat that exceeds thousand degrees Fahrenheit standing right next to it well if you're looking for extreme locations it doesn't get much better than an erupting volcano on Vanuatu we were there to investigate how quickly microbial colonization happens on rocks we certainly wouldn't imagine that there is life in the lava lake itself just way too hot for anything to happen but the instant the rock cools to below about 120 degrees Celsius it's considered habitable environment getting handle on how microbes can colonize this particular substrate is good example of what will happen across the planet and has happened across the planet throughout you lot of time having the cameras everywhere particularly during the sampling at the very edge of the lava lake is critical because we can go back and see exactly how far we were from the edge exactly how closely distributed these newly formed rocks were this isn't something you can measure in the moment 3d reconstruction of the crater itself will be very useful and figuring out which layers are iron-rich which layers are sulfur rich within the caldera as whole there's certainly life coating the walls as you go down on some of the surfaces down at the bottom almost certainly there's high microbial Institue in' see the greatest scientific value is just having videographic support that can be used in tandem with other research that's happening in the world really believe there's an opportunity to merge those worlds of exploration and and coming back and reporting on all kinds of information that has not yet been discovered