Boaty McBoatface may be better known for its name than for its oceangoing prowess. But the autonomous underwater vehicle and darling of the internet is headed to greater things: embarking on the longest journey of an AUV by far, with an uninterrupted, roughly 2,000-mile crossing of the Arctic Ocean. The submersible robot got its moniker when it became the consolation prize in a 2016 publicity stunt. The United Kingdom's Natural Environmental Research Council had created an online poll to name the country's new polar research ship. The public picked "Boaty McBoatface" (suggested by a BBC radio announcer), but the British government nixed the idea and named the ship after naturalist David Attenborough.

Some secrets are buried too deep to get at. Ocean fronts deep below the surface, where distinct masses of water come together, are hard to study. But a marine robot and its submarine buddy might be about to change that. Thomas, an uncrewed boat designed and built near Portsmouth, UK, is embarking on a two-week mission to record data from such hard-to-reach waters. The main goal is to study oceanographic fronts, boundaries between two distinct water masses, which are common in the seas around the UK.