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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 02 2017, @04:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the long-distance-ice-pick dept.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is testing probes intended for use on Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and other icy moons:

Want to go ice fishing on Jupiter's moon Europa? There's no promising you'll catch anything, but a new set of robotic prototypes could help. Since 2015, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been developing new technologies for use on future missions to ocean worlds. That includes a subsurface probe that could burrow through miles of ice, taking samples along the way; robotic arms that unfold to reach faraway objects; and a projectile launcher for even more distant samples.

All these technologies were developed as part of the Ocean Worlds Mobility and Sensing study, a research project funded by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. Each prototype focuses on obtaining samples from the surface -- or below the surface -- of an icy moon.

"In the future, we want to answer the question of whether there's life on the moons of the outer planets -- on Europa, Enceladus and Titan," said Tom Cwik, who leads JPL's Space Technology Program. "We're working with NASA Headquarters to identify the specific systems we need to build now, so that in 10 or 15 years, they could be ready for a spacecraft."

Those systems would face a variety of challenging environments. Temperatures can reach hundreds of degrees below freezing. Rover wheels might cross ice that behaves like sand. On Europa, surfaces are bathed in radiation.

List of largest lakes and seas in the Solar System.


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  • (Score: 1) by zzarko on Sunday April 02 2017, @01:23PM (1 child)

    by zzarko (5697) on Sunday April 02 2017, @01:23PM (#487929)

    "Temperatures can reach hundreds of degrees below freezing."

    Last time I checked, they could go as low as -273 degrees Celsius, or 0 degrees Kelvin... But, I admit, "hundreds of degrees" is a bit vague.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 02 2017, @01:34PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday April 02 2017, @01:34PM (#487930) Journal

    It's very cold on the moons the of outer planets.

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