Newscenter Media News American space agency NASA is testing dozens of autonomous swimming robots in its quest to explore the oceans beneath the icy shells of moons like Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus.
The creation and testing of robots capable of searching the huge oceans beneath the thick ice shells of worlds such as Europa for traces of life is currently in progress.
Known as SWIM (Sensing With Independent Microswimmers), a number of idea prototypes braved the waters of a competitive swimming pool at Caltech in Pasadena, California, for testing.
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In order to look for evidence of life, the initiative intends to deploy several palm-sized autonomous underwater robots into the interior oceans of the ice moons.
Sensors to measure the temperature, pressure, acidity, electrical conductivity, and chemical makeup of the waters it investigates will be installed on each robot.
“People might ask, why is NASA developing an underwater robot for space exploration?” says Ethan Schaller, project leader at NASA’s JPL, explaining the motivation behind SWIM. “Because there are places in the solar system that we want to go to look for life—and we think life requires liquid water.”
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