Life Hunting On Europa Could Be Done By NASA’s Tunneling Bot

The impressive probe known as the “Tunnelbot” could potentially be the breakthrough of exploring the thick ice layer on Europa.

Europa – Jupiter’s fourth smallest moon – is considered as one of the most potential spots in the solar system that has life signs. Scientists believe that the liquid ocean within a thick layer of ice could carry living organisms. However, the ice layer is the biggest challenge the scientists must face before reaching the liquid oceans due to its thickness of 30 kilometers (18 miles).

NASA’s researchers in Glenn Research COMPASS team have come up with a plan to create a robot that could make the short work through the icy shell in Europa, as a result, approach the ocean below. The probe, which is powered by nuclear energy can dig into the icy shell of the moon to look inside its distribution and could possibly access the deep dark zone.

The Tunnelbot was visualized into two versions, one would apply a radioactive heat source module while the other would apply a small nuclear reactor. Both of them melt the ice by making use of excess heat from their nuclear reactors while traveling down.

When moving, the Tunnelbot constantly evaluates the ice, checks for life signs and report to the Earth via a fiber optic cable which is connected to the communication device at the surface of Jupiter's fourth-smallest moon. Also, the probe could explore the smaller lakes inside the ice layer before reaching the deep ocean of Europa.

The research sponsored by NASA is only a concept study. Bringing it into reality would take years of work and safety measure to avoid destroying the promising ecosystem available on Europa – also how to transport the heavy robot to Jupiter's moon.

However, how to transport the Tunnelbot to Europa is not one of the scientists’ concerns. According to Andrew Dombard, Chicago University of Illinois’s professor of Earth and environmental sciences, the probe could assumingly get to the moon and only focused on the mechanism of the probe during the exploring process.