Dante rescued from volcano.After all the high-tech, attention-grabbing wizardry wiz·ard·ry n. pl. wiz·ard·ries 1. The art, skill, or practice of a wizard; sorcery. 2. a. A power or effect that appears magical by its capacity to transform: , the saga of the robot Dante 2 ultimately ended with two humans climbing into a volcano on foot last week to retrieve the disabled machine. Built by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University, at Pittsburgh, Pa.; est. 1967 through the merger of the Carnegie Institute of Technology (founded 1900, opened 1905) and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research (founded 1913). in Pittsburgh, Dante had crawled into the crater of Alaska's Mt. Spurr in late July. The eight-legged, spiderlike walker spent 8 days navigating 660 feet down the steep slopes and analyzing gases escaping from the floor of the crater. After completing its mission, Dante started its ascent. It had scaled 250 feet of the return route before rolling over on Aug. 5 (SN: 8/13/94, p.101). The Dante crew first tried airlifting the robot using its tether tether to tie an animal up by the head or neck so that it can graze but not move away. See also barton tether. , a power and communications umbilical cord umbilical cord (ŭmbĭl`ĭkəl), cordlike structure about 22 in. (56 cm) long in the pregnant human female, extending from the abdominal wall of the fetus to the placenta. designed to hold the 1,700-pound machine. But the tether inexplicably in·ex·pli·ca·ble adj. Difficult or impossible to explain or account for. in·ex  pli·ca·bil snapped during the attempted rescur. After waiting for the weather to clear, project manager John E. Bares and an Alaska National Guardsman hiked into the crater on Aug. 13. They rigged the robot to a line from a helicopter, which then flew Dante 2 to Anchorage.
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