Europa’s orbit is elliptical, and the moon’s shape is affected by Jupiter’s gravity and deforms as it approaches Jupiter.
This change in shape creates friction within Europa, generating enormous amounts of heat in a mechanism known as tidal heating, which melts some of the ice and forms a vast inland ocean beneath the moon’s thick icy shell.
Europa’s interior sea is salty, and although the moon is much smaller than Earth, it is estimated to have an average depth of about 100 kilometers and a total volume of water twice that of all of Earth’s oceans.
Additionally, Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Callisto and Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus are thought to have internal oceans.
Liquid water is essential to life as we know it, which is why the ocean world is at the forefront of the search for extraterrestrial life.
Under the Sea (Ice)
The autonomous underwater exploration robot envisioned by SWIM is extremely small. The wedge-shaped body is approximately 12 centimeters long. Devices called “cryobots” use nuclear energy to melt the ice and transport robots beneath the thick icy shells of these satellites. The idea is to pack about 40 robots into a cryobot and spend several years penetrating a thick shell of ice.
There are benefits to dispatching so many exploration robots. One is that you can explore a wider area. Second, it is intended to work in teams, allowing multiple robots to explore the same area in overlapping directions, reducing errors in observation data.
Each robot will be equipped with sensors that measure the temperature, pressure, acidity, electrical conductivity, and chemical composition of the body of water it investigates. All of these sensors are implemented on a chip that is just a few millimeters square.
“Some may wonder why NASA is developing underwater robots for space exploration,” said Ethan Schaller, project leader at NASA’s JPL, explaining the motivation behind SWIM. While saying the following: “Because there are places in the solar system where we want to go looking for life. We think life needs liquid water.”
This story was originally wired Japan Translated from Japanese.
(Tag translation) Space
