For more than 10 years, a group of developers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been developing a four-legged robot that could land on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and travel across its surface. This mission has now been canceled, but engineers hope that the vehicle they have created will be able to fly to Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Europa Lander Project
A team of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently shared their experience of developing a walking robot for the Europa Lander mission. The project has now been abandoned, but they hope to use it to study Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
The development of a robot to study Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus began back in 2013. These two celestial bodies are similar in that their icy surfaces conceal oceans that may contain life. Therefore, scientists really want to launch a robot that would swim in them and search for living creatures.
However, they are currently forced to work on a more realistic task: moving across the surface and drilling it. This was the purpose of the Europa Lander project. Moreover, the robot was supposed to be semi-autonomous. The distance to this body is great, and the moon is often hidden behind Jupiter. Therefore, commands had to be transmitted to it only once every few days, and the rest of the time it had to walk on its own four legs and explore the icy surface.
Development results
A great deal of work has been accomplished during this time. Engineers not only developed drawings of a four-legged robot, but also created its prototype. They even took into account the fact that there is a lot of radiation in Jupiter’s system, so they managed to create a protection system for each of its elements.
The robot created by the team had all the functions that scientists considered necessary for a trip to Europa (it was Europa, not Enceladus, that was considered the primary target). They first tested it using simulations, then in their laboratory, and finally on the ice in Alaska, and were pleased with the results.
However, eventually the project to land on Europa was deemed too complicated and was canceled. But the engineers working on the robot are not discouraged. Now they are focused on convincing everyone to use their developments for research on Enceladus.
According to phys.org
