How can researchers explore the depths of ocean worlds like Jupiter’s moon, Europa? This is what the Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers (SWIM) robotic explorers hopes to address as scientists and engineers at NASA JPL have been testing 3D-printed prototypes in a 25-yard competition swimming pool at Caltech with the goal of delivering them to Europa via an ice-melting cryobot that will melt its way through the thick ice shell of the small moon, someday.
“It’s awesome to build a robot from scratch and see it successfully operate in a relevant environment,” said Dr. Ethan Schaler, who is the principal investigator for SWIM at NASA JPL. “Underwater robots in general are very hard, and this is just the first in a series of designs we’d have to work through to prepare for a trip to an ocean world. But it’s proof that we can build these robots with the necessary capabilities and begin to understand what challenges they would face on a subsurface mission.”
Image of a prototype of a SWIM robot during a pool test at Caltech in September 2024. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
While the prototypes are only 16,5 inches in length and 5 pounds in weight, the final iteration that will travel to Europa will be approximately the size of a cell phone and will consist of dozens of SWIM bots designed to autonomously explore the depths of Europa searching for signs of life. Additionally, researchers used computer models to simulate how the cellphone-sized robots would adhere to gravity and pressure of Europa’s ocean.
“People might ask, why is NASA developing an underwater robot for space exploration? It’s because there are places we want to go in the solar system to look for life, and we think life needs water. So, we need robots that can explore those environments — autonomously, hundreds of millions of miles from home,” said Dr. Schaler.
This testing comes as NASA recently launched its Europa Clipper mission with the goal of conducting dozens of flybys of the small moon and determine the habitability potential of its interior liquid water ocean. Europa Clipper is slated to arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and will spend four years sending data and images back to Earth that scientists can use to determine how the interior ocean interacts with the surface and if the ocean could hold the ingredients for life as we know it.
How will these SWIM robots explore ocean worlds in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: NASA JPL, NASA JPL (1), NASA