A robot has just set off on its mission to complete the first-ever global circumnavigation with an autonomous underwater vehicle. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The self-gliding sub launched on the morning of October 10 from the docks of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, where it will go on to ride the Gulf Stream across the Atlantic Ocean.

Its journey will echo the route taken by the Magellan Expedition between 1519 and 1522, the first known circumnavigation of the Earth , which headed from Spain, onto the Canary Islands, arced past southern Africa, crossed the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and returned home via South America.

Its first major stop will be Gran Canaria in Spain’s Canary Isla

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