Narrator: This is Science Today. When researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, first launched an autonomous underwater vehicle called Spray, the plan initially failed. Equipment malfunction stopped the mission temporarily and then nature took its course. Traveling the Gulf Stream, the 112-pound glider was up against one of the world's strongest currents. Scripps Oceanographer Russ Davis explains.

Davis: The Gulf Stream carried it back exactly in the opposite direction and eventually we wiggled around and got there after almost two months of work.

Narrator: Traveling half-a mile-an hour Spray did make it from Massachusetts to Bermuda. Now Davis wants the six-foot-long glider to make a roundtrip voyage.

Davis : It remains to be seen whether we'll be able to do two of those roundtrips from the same vehicle, it depends on how good we get it, doing it quickly, ‘cause it only has so much gas, so to speak.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.