Scientists at the NASA are designing instruments that can navigate tricky terrain, withstand temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero, and collect samples. A robotic claw is one of the tools being developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that can be used to navigate the icy environment on Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons). (Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech)
It's National Robotics Week, and time for some robots
Aside from the challenge of sending a spacecraft all the way to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, there is very treacherous terrain to consider if the craft were to arrive. According to NASA JPL News, at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero, rovers may encounter ice that behaves like sand, in addition to possible atmospheric radiation. Navigating the terrain is one issue, but developing instruments that can burrow through ice and take samples is another problem entirely. The leader of the robotics group and overseer of the research, Hari Nayar, said that "One of the most exciting places we can go is deep into subsurface oceans -- but doing so requires new technologies that don't exist yet." These technologies that don’t yet exist provide an opportunity for NASA to dive into the unknown and to embrace the challenges that these unexplored worlds may present.
An engineering fellow at the NASA JPL, Brian Wilcox, designed a prototype for a subsurface probe that was inspired by "melt probes" used to melt through snow and ice to explore subsurface regions on Earth. The current problem is that they use heat inefficiently, and these probes for a Europa mission could potentially have to burrow through roughly six to twelve miles of ice to reach these subsurface oceans. A probe that doesn’t use its energy efficiently may cool down and freeze in the icy crust of Jupiter’s Moon. In place of the melt probe concept, the JPL is developing a thermally insulated probe that, as described by Andrew Tarantola of Engadget, “...employs a chunk of heat-source plutonium to act as the energy source.” Tarantola goes on to say that this device would have a rotating blade at the bottom that would, “...chew through the ice below it, pushing the ice chips it produces through the device's body where they melt against the plutonium,” and the the water from the melted ice chips could be directed back up to the rover for biosignature analysis. And to make sure that no organisms from Earth survived the trip to Jupiter and could potentially give a false positive in the biosignature analysis, the subsurface probe would have to heat itself to over 900 degrees Fahrenheit on the way there. According to NASA JPL News, “That would kill any residual organisms and decompose complex organic molecules that could affect science results.”
NASA has also looked at the use of robotic arms which can collect samples from the rover, and projectile launchers that could further expand the range of samples that could be collected. NASA’S Mars Rovers never had more than a six to eight-foot range from the rover, but the JPL has proposed a folding boom arm that could reach up to 33 feet for future missions. The projectile launcher could be used for targets that are much further away, and could potentially fire a sampling mechanism up 164 feet. Even though each of these technologies is still in there prototypical stages and all of the tests conducted with them were just the starting points, the great challenges these potential missions pose is sure to provoke equally great solutions, so it is a very exciting time for NASA; as long as they’re funding remains intact.
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