NASA may make swimming robots to find aliens
Categories: SCIENCE NEWS
NASA may make swimming robots to find aliens
Jupiter's satellite Europa and Saturn's satellite Enceladus are covered with ice. The very thick ice sheet goes from the surface to the depth of several kilometers. Scientists think that beneath this layer of ice on these satellites are vast oceans of liquid water. At least so far, we've only been able to speculate about the strange sea creatures swimming in these unknown seas.
But now a concept design has proposed a new solution to the problem of ice sheets several kilometers thick. Ethan Schaller, a robotics mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has come up with a new idea. Schaller's Sensing with Independent Micro-Swimmers (SWIM) concept was awarded $600,000 from NASA.
Sklar's concept involves sending dozens of mobile phone-sized swimming probes to Europa and dropping them into the water under ice. But how can we penetrate kilometers of ice to reach the liquid ocean? by cryobot. The cryobot will have a narrow ice-melting probe that will house a swimming probe.
The narrow probe will melt ice and reach the ocean. And this will be the time to release swimming probes and gather data. If the conept design gets developed into something concrete, then these probes may actually get sent to Europa. NASA is planning to make it happen by 2030.