NASA's SWIM robots, designed to explore icy moon oceans, showed maneuverability in Caltech tests after earlier trials in Alaska.
A cryobot melts through the ice to deliver tiny robots that search for life signals in oceans beneath icy moons.The prototype called SWIM, which stands for Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers, was constructed at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to demonstrate the feasibility of the mission concept.
A cryobot, a specialized probe that can melt through thick icy crusts, would carry these tiny robots beneath the ice. The robots would scatter once they were in the ocean, looking for temperature and chemical cues that could point to the existence of life. According to NASA, however, robots intended for space travel would be far smaller, with dimensions down to roughly one-third of the prototype’s size. This allows them to function in constrained and difficult alien habitats because they are smaller than existing underwater scientific vehicles.
JPL NASA Robot Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers Swim
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