Snake-like NASA probe: designed for icy moons with Earthly benefits
This isn’t your father’s space probe.
NASA scientists have developed a snake-like robot capable of exploring cracks and crevasses on icy moons where liquid oceans are thought to exist – but it could also prove worthy on projects closer to home.
According the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, the EELS system also known as the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor is a mobile instrument platform that was designed to explore icy canyons, assess potential habitability and, ultimately, search for evidence of life.
EELS was built to autonomously explore its surroundings and adapt to changing conditions and environments.
“It has the capability to go to locations where other robots can’t go. Though some robots are better at one particular type of terrain or other, the idea for EELS is the ability to do it all,” said JPL’s Matthew Robinson, EELS project manager. “When you’re going places where you don’t know what you’ll find, you want to send a versatile, risk-aware robot that’s prepared for uncertainty – and can make decisions on its own.”
If it finds a crack in the ice, its sensor-packed "head" navigates the break and creates a circular path to make its way down through the crust. If it finds a space too narrow, it burrows and drills down into the ice like a screw into wood. If it finds an ocean, well … you get the point. It knows how to adapt to its surroundings.
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Science Objective
The Cassini probe, launched from the Space Coast in 1997, has provided vast amounts of data on Saturn and its moons. Among its findings, data indicates that Enceladus, one of those moons, possesses a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust.
Plumes of vapor erupting from its surface are conduits directly to liquid water, potentially making this the easiest path to a habitable liquid ocean. Scientists have hypothesized environmental conditions informed by eruption models.
These models have driven every aspect of the EELS architecture to make it adaptable to the challenges the probe could face on this journey from the surface to the ocean. And the probe’s adaptability opens other destinations such as Martian polar caps, Jupiter’s moon Europa and even ice sheets on Earth.
The current effort includes working with scientists to identify high-priority, high-impact scientific investigations here that will also demonstrate the capabilities of EELS on a different celestial body.
Mission to Enceladus
While there is no set launch date for the EELS probe, scientist hope to finalize the robot's concept and prove functionality by the fall of 2024. That means any mission is likely years away from launching, and then you have the travel time. The Voyager probes reached Saturn after about three years and two months. The larger, heavier Cassini probe took longer: six years and seven months to reach the ringed planet.
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EELS Architecture
The EELS robot weighs about 220 pounds and is 13 feet long. It’s composed of 10 identical segments that rotate, using screw threads for propulsion, traction, and grip. The team has been trying out a variety of screws: white, 8-inch-diameter 3D-printed plastic screws for testing on looser terrain, and narrower, sharper black metal screws for ice.
“We have a different philosophy of robot development than traditional spacecraft, with many quick cycles of testing and correcting,” said Hiro Ono, EELS principal investigator at JPL. “There are dozens of textbooks about how to design a four-wheel vehicle, but there is no textbook about how to design an autonomous snake robot to boldly go where no robot has gone before. We have to write our own. That’s what we’re doing now.”
Capability
EELS creates a 3D map of its surroundings using four pairs of stereo cameras and a system similar to radar but employs short laser pulses instead of radio waves. With the data from those sensors, navigation algorithms figure out the safest path forward.
Benefit
This system can further ocean world exploration by its diverse adaptability to various types of terrains. EELS allows for deeper exploration into areas that were once unattainable.
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Rob Landers is a veteran multimedia journalist for the USA Today Network of Florida. Contact Landers at 321-242-3627 or rlanders@gannett.com. Instagram: @ByRobLanders Youtube: @florida_today
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Unique probe ready to slither into Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus
