A radioisotope powered cryobot for penetrating the Europan ice shell

Frontiers of astrobiology and the humanities

“…Soon after, the Galileo mission was proposed to examine the Jovian system with a Europa Lander, equipped with a submersible called a 'hydrobot' that was coupled to an ice-breaker called a 'cryobot' (Trowell et al, 1996;Horvath et al, 1997). For valid reasons, sometime later, the hydrobot-cryobot proposal was rightly criticized and subsequently abandoned (Greenberg, 2005), even though a suggested improved proposal was later independently suggested (Zimmerman et al, 2001).…”

Radioisotope Heat Sources and Power Systems Enabling Ocean Worlds Subsurface and Ocean Access Missions

“…The physical and chemical measurements required to search for life are not possible through remote observations, or at the surface due to weathering, impact gardening, and, in the case of Europa, radiation bombardment. The ultimate goal for Ocean Worlds exploration is in situ exploration of any subsurface oceans and their interfaces, which necessitates traverses of up to tens of kilometers of ice [4,5].…”

“…The Europan ice shells considered here ranged between the 20 th and 80 th percentile cases identified in Ref. [5], leading to a spread of performance along the vertical axis for each architecture. 7 and Table 2.…”

Laser Mass Spectrometry in Planetary Science

“…In the case of an icy surface, access to the interior can be accomplished via a melting probe (Zimmerman et al, 2001), rather than a mechanical drill. The realistic goal is to penetrate at least below the radiation altered layer of Europa's surface (a few meters) but more ambitious investigations aim at going through Europa's entire ice shell into the putative ocean.…”