[Industry is Amazing] NASA is testing underwater robots with the goal of sending them into extraterrestrial oceans. Before that, the U.S. space agency plans to share its technology with scientists on Earth. Enceladus, Titan, and Europa—these are the terrains NASA wants to explore. These moons of Saturn and Jupiter harbor vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces. To explore them, NASA is developing not new rockets, but… underwater drones.
« There are places in the solar system where we want to search for life, and we think life needs water. So we need robots that can explore these environments autonomously, hundreds of millions of kilometers away from us, » explains Ethan Schaler, the lead researcher of the project, called Swim (Sensing with Independent Micro-Swimmers). Many parameters to measure
Propelled by two propellers and equipped with four directional fins, these self-propelled swimming robots are expected to be about 12 centimeters long. Larger prototypes, 42 cm in length and weighing 2.3 kg, have been 3D printed and tested, in September 2023, in a pool in California (USA). The robots would measure parameters such as temperature, pressure, acidity, alkalinity, conductivity, and chemical composition of an ocean using sensors integrated into a single chip, just a few square millimeters in size, developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). The submarines’ battery would last up to two hours, enabling them to explore volumes of up to 86,000 cubic meters of water.
According to NASA, the goal is to send a dozen robots simultaneously on each mission, with departures spread over four to five waves. They would reach their destination via a cryobot, a robot designed to penetrate an ice layer. A new communication system would also be included to allow the robots to send back data and track their position.
Extreme Temperatures… on Earth
Currently, no date has been set for the launch of the Swim submarines. As part of their development, NASA is drawing on experience gained since 2022 through IceNode, an experimental fleet of autonomous robots designed to help measure the melting rates of ice shelves, for example in Antarctica.
During tests conducted in March 2024 in the Arctic Ocean, in the Beaufort Sea, outdoor temperatures as low as -45°C put the equipment (and the people) to the test, acknowledges the U.S. space agency, which hopes to use Earth-based applications of its research to demonstrate their value.
Source: Usine Nouvelle
