Europa, Jupiter’s satellite, and Enceladus, Saturn’s satellite, are huge balls of ice with oceans of liquid water under their thick frozen shells. According to the theories, the conditions in these oceans are very favorable and should contribute to the origin and existence of extraterrestrial life there. The search for traces of this life will be taken up by the Clipper mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2030 and will make several close passes over Europe.
And the U.S. space agency NASA is looking at the problem of studying extraterrestrial oceans a little wider. As part of its well-known program NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) agency began funding the project SWIM (Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers). The mission descent vehicle is supposed to land on the icy surface of one of the planets and begin lowering the probe. Inside this probe is a nuclear battery whose heat melts the ice and allows the probe to descend. And when the probe reaches the liquid water layer, it will unleash a swarm of 50 small SWIM robots to study the environment.
Each of the SWIM robots, 12 centimeters long, is wedge-shaped and is equipped with a propulsion system, an onboard computer, a battery, an ultrasonic communication system and a set of sensors that measure temperature, salinity, acidity, pressure and water chemistry.
These robots will swim in the water, like a school of fish, collecting data and looking for biomarkers that are traces of life. The data will be collected in real time, formed into packets that will be transmitted via probe to the descent vehicle on the surface, and then to Earth for further processing and analysis. And back from Earth, instructions and commands will be transmitted to control the actions of the SWIM robot swarm.
In the pages of our website we have repeatedly told our readers about the projects of various robots designed to explore extraterrestrial oceans. However, Ethan Schaler (Ethan Schaler) of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who owns the idea of SWIM robots, says that using this approach will allow you to cover and explore a larger area, or rather the volume of European ocean.
Unfortunately, the idea of using a swarm of SWIM robots may remain just an idea, like many NIAC program projects. Nevertheless, NASA has already awarded $600,000 in funding that will allow Ethan Schaller and his team to begin designing, building and testing SWIM robot prototypes over the next two years.
