Key Technologies and Instrumentation for Subsurface Exploration of Ocean Worlds

Abstract

In this chapter, the key technologies and the instrumentation required for the subsurface exploration of ocean worlds are discussed. The focus is laid on Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus because they have the highest potential for such missions in the near future. The exploration of their oceans requires landing on the surface, penetrating the thick ice shell with an ice-penetrating probe, and probably diving with an underwater vehicle through dozens of kilometers of water to the ocean floor, to have the chance to find

Research Trends and Future Perspectives in Marine Biomimicking Robotics

“…Another reason justifying the recent growth in robotic biomimicry research is space exploration. Such an exploration is not only oriented to Mars, but it actually includes the sub-surface oceans of Europa and Enceladus and other icy moons as equivalents to deep-sea terrestrial environments [ 38 , 53 , 79 , 80 ]. Proposed applications plan to use vectors to carry biomimicking probes for their delivery into specific terrestrial, atmospheric and aquatic environments, orienting biomimicking research toward the design of the structural hardware and toward the emulation of specific behavioral aspects.…”

“…Therefore, new robotic solutions are increasingly capable of operating without human supervision across ecosystems and under virtually any habitat condition [ 30 ] in a cooperative and intercommunicating mode [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Robots are being used for a wide range of agricultural, industrial, and broad environmental activities, e.g., [ 35 , 36 , 37 ], including forefront deep-sea and extra-terrestrial operational scenarios, e.g., [ 31 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]). For example, in the oceanic domains, robots’ data-gathering provides long-lasting time series on species presence and their abundances and environmental data in geographically and three-dimensionally extended water column-seabed scenarios [ 21 , 31 , 40 ].…”

Theoretical constraints imposed by gradient detection and dispersal on microbial size in astrobiological environments

“…In either event, our framework offers a simple heuristic for predicting what are the smallest organisms with gradient sensing and motility in a given domain, and this tool can be gainfully employed in the selection and design of apposite instrumentation. The latter subject is being vigorously pursued vis-à-vis Mars, Venus, and the subsurface ocean worlds of the Solar system (Ball et al, 2007;Hays et al, 2017;Vago et al, 2017;Chan et al, 2019;Stamenković et al, 2019;Dachwald et al, 2020;Carrier et al, 2020;Hein et al, 2020). It is not implausible, therefore, that the discovery of extraterrestrial life might progress a posse ad esse in the coming decades.…”

Past and Future Comet Missions

“…The SD2 drill on Philae was designed to reach a depth of 23 cm and retrieve material (but not an intact core) for composition analysis (Finzi et al 2007), while Triple-F proposed to extract 50 cm cores in touch-and-go landings (Küppers et al 2009). Neither of these has been successfully demonstrated at a comet; obtaining meters-long ice cores will require significant advances of these technologies, but may benefit from current developments for ocean world applications (Dachwald et al 2020). The largest drill being developed for a near-future flight opportunity is the 1 m long TRIDENT drill (Zacny et al 2021), expected to launch to the Moon in 2022, on a large lander or rover (450 -2000 kg; a very different class of mission than the 100 kg Philae).…”