Swarm of tiny robots could look for signs of alien life on a distant world

A concept in development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) could someday allow a swarm of cellphone-size robots to look for signs of alien life in a distant world.

Packed inside a narrow ice-melting probe, the tiny planetary ocean exploration robots could whisk through the water beneath the miles-thick icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus.

"My idea is, where can we take miniaturized robotics and apply them in interesting new ways for exploring our solar system. With a swarm of small swimming robots, we are able to explore a much larger volume of ocean water and improve our measurements by having multiple robots collecting data in the same area," says Ethan Schaler, a robotics mechanical engineer at NASA-JPL in Southern California, whose Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers (SWIM) concept was recently awarded USD600,000 in Phase II funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

Someday, a swarm of robots could whisk through the water beneath the miles-thick ice shell of Europa, looking for signs of alien life: https://t.co/h8dDYkGGPuRight now, our team is building a spacecraft that will study Europa, inside and out, from space: https://t.co/EsmZQyuJzi pic.twitter.com/RiPco54vRk

— NASA Europa Clipper (@EuropaClipper) June 28, 2022

The early-stage SWIM concept envisions wedge-shaped robots, each with its own propulsion system, onboard computer, and ultrasound communications system, along with simple sensors for temperature, salinity, acidity, and pressure.

According to NASA, about four dozen SWIM robots would fit compactly within a nuclear-powered probe or cryobot like Probe using Radioisotopes for Icy Moons Exploration (PRIME). PRIME is one of several cryobot concepts being developed through NASA's Scientific Exploration Subsurface Access Mechanism for Europa (SESAME) program.

"What if, after all those years it took to get into an ocean, you come through the ice shell in the wrong place? What if there's signs of life over there but not where you entered the ocean? By bringing these swarms of robots with us, we'd be able to look 'over there' to explore much more of our environment than a single cryobot would allow," said SWIM team scientist Samuel Howell of JPL, who also works on Europa Clipper.