NASA is trying to develop EELS or Exobiology Extent Life Surveyor to use it for Saturn’s Moon’s expedition called the Encaladus. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The robot will be totally autonomous and independent of any pilot . It will also likely to be 13-feet-long and 100 KGs. However, the robot is still in infancy and is a long way from the actual vision. NASA is designing EELS in a way that it can endure even the harshest environment the moon throws at it. They believe the design of this kind is better suited for cliffs, gaps and craters commonly found on Enceladus.
EELS Project Manager, Matthew Robinson said that they want to design the robot in such a way that it can do whatever it needs to do in that hostile environment. While there are several other robots which are better in a certain field than EELS, they are not versatile. Their first priority during development is to develop a versatile machine. A machine that is also autonomous and can take its own decisions. The JPL have been testing and making amends to the design as back as 2019, using different extreme terrain such as their Mars Yard.
The other main focus of team JPLs is on the unmanned and autonomous system. The distance between Earth and Encaladus is enormous. This is why its not realistic that someone from Earth controls its actions and movements. So the team is going to pack it with cameras and 3D sensors to create a map of the environment its traversing in. This will be necessary for navigation.
NASA chose Enceladus as an expedition sites because of observations made by Cassini Probe. The probes studies revealed that there could be salt water beneath the frozen crust of the moon. While it still exhibits sub zero temperatures, NASA believes that it may be habitable. They just need to study it a bit more. This is the same purpose the EELS is built for, Once the development is complete, which is estimated to be 2024. It will still however take 12 years for a spacecraft to take EELS to the orbit.
Also read: Porsche partners with Mobileye for Automated Driving in future cars
