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Testing a robot that could drill into Europa and Enceladus
We don’t currently have a mission to put it on, but NASA is making sure it’s ready.
Force torque sensors installed in most of its joints act a bit like a nervous system, informing the robot when key components sustain excessive loads to prevent it from damaging the arm or the drill. The National Academies committee responsible for formulating these decadal strategies did not recommend giving it a go, mainly because they believed harsh radiation in the Jovian system would make detecting biosignatures “challenging” for a lander. Another argument for changing our go-to ocean world is that water plumes containing salts along with carbon- and nitrogen-bearing molecules have already been observed on Enceladus, which means there is a slight chance biosignatures could be detected by a flyby mission.
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