NASA has begun work on the development of submarine-robot Swim drones, an acronym for Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers, with the goal of searching for traces of life that may lurk in the oceans of celestial bodies in our solar system, such as that of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons that has long attracted the attention of the U.S. space agency. On this satellite, there appears to be an ocean of liquid water about twice the size of Earth’s, hidden beneath miles of ice layers.
The drones, which are only prototypes for now, will be sent as part of future missions probably also to explore other satellites in the solar system that contain water. Currently, tests are being conducted by a team of researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, coordinated by Ethan Schaler, at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif. The project involves releasing the drones into the ocean of Europa after drilling through the ice layer. Once in the water, these will move in swarms of dozens of small robots, which will swim autonomously and “intelligently” and will be able to intercept with precision, chemical and temperature signals that could indicate the presence of life forms.
The researchers explain that these drones should also be able to talk to each other using in-water communication systems. “Underwater robots in general are very challenging to design,” Schaler points out, ”and this is just the first in a series of projects we should be working on to prepare for a trip to an ocean world. In parallel with the tank tests, the researchers are conducting some computer simulations to see how to optimize the performance of the robots under particular conditions of pressure and temperature by simulating those they would find on Europa.
