NASA's Undersea Robot Crawls Beneath Antarctic Ice in Test for Icy Moons

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels 16 hours ago



A prototype undersea rover called BRUIE being tested in Alaska in 2015.
(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It's going to take a lot more than a doggy paddle to explore the oceans hidden below the icy surfaces of some of the solar system's most intriguing moons.

That's why NASA engineers are already working on an underwater rover they hope could one day tackle the challenges posed by ocean worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. A team has been working on such a robot, called Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration or BRUIE, for a few years now. NASA is taking a prototype of that rover to Antarctica for testing in the most similar environment to those moons found on Earth.

"The ice shells covering these distant oceans serve as a window into the oceans below, and the chemistry of the ice could help feed life within those oceans," Kevin Hand, lead scientist on the BRUIE project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a statement. "Here on Earth, the ice covering our polar oceans serves a similar role, and our team is particularly interested in what is happening where the water meets the ice."

The tests will take place at Australia's Casey research station along the coast of Antarctica far south of Australia, where BRUIE will spend a month exploring both the ocean and inland lakes. The rover focuses on where the top of the water meets the bottom of the ice.

More:
https://www.space.com/underwater-rover-testing-for-icy-moons.html

[KelleyKramer]

1. Wow, very cool

Just seems like it would be hard to communicate or send back data from under ice and water on a distant moon