TUNNELBOT TO EUROPA |NASA's nuclear-powered robot to search for life in Jupiter's moon.

Jupiter - The 5th Rock from the Sun-Share 5

Jupiter's Galilean Moon, EUROPA-3

Europa has the potential for life and to do that we need to penetrate its icey crust to reach the liquid water below... This video provides a path to do just that... Remember, Full Screen, Sound Up for best Visual and Sound presentation.

Futuristic Zone:
"Between 1995 and 2003, NASA's Galileo spacecraft made several flybys of Jupiter's moon, Europa. Several findings from observations of the moon pointed to evidence of a liquid ocean beneath Europa's icy surface. The ocean, researchers believe, could harbor microbial life, or evidence of now-extinct microbial life."Estimates of the thickness of the ice shell range between 2 and 30 kilometers (1.2 and 18.6 miles), and is a major barrier any lender will have to overcome in order to access areas we think have a chance of holding biosignatures representative of life on Europa," said Andrew Dombard, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

A concept study for a nuclear-powered "tunnelbot" that can penetrate the ice shell and reach the top of Europa's ocean while carrying devices and instruments that can be used to search for signs of life or extinct life. The bot would also evaluate the habitability of the ice shelf itself.

The bot would sample ice throughout the shell, as well as water at the ice-water interface, and would look at the underside of the ice to search for microbial biofilms. The bot would also have the capability of searching liquid water "lakes" within the ice shell.

The researchers considered two designs for their bot: one powered by a small nuclear reactor, and the other powered by General Purpose Heat Source bricks—radioactive heat source modules designed for space missions. Heat from both these sources could be used to melt the ice shell. Communications would be provided by a string of "repeaters" connected to the bot by fiber optic cables.

NASA routinely sponsors concept studies to test where the technology is that is needed to answer important questions in the solar system. Perhaps no question is more significant than, "Is there life elsewhere?" and Europa is one of the best places to look. Whether a tunneling mission is scheduled, and if so, whether one of these designs is selected, remains to be seen."

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