NASA mulls going all steam-punk with a fleet of jumping robots to explore Saturn's mysterious moons
- Reference: 1593151452
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/26/nasa_steam_robots/
- Source link:
The gizmos known as Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robots for Ocean Worlds, or [1]SPARROW for short, are quite odd: disc-shaped robots equipped with thrusters, each inside a spherical wire-frame cage. Each complete bot is about the size of a soccer ball, and is designed to bounce around the frozen landscape.
Scientists are particularly keen to probe Europa, Enceladus and Titan; they all contain water, a vital building block for life. They believe it's possible these natural satellites could support extraterrestrial life, and want to send in robots to study the moons' surfaces.
[2]
Head of steam ... An illustration of a SPARROW. Source: NASA/JPL. Click to enlarge
It's important that the robots don’t contaminate or damage the surfaces with any foreign substances. Thus, using chemical propellants as fuel is out of the question. These moons are also well out into the sticks of the Solar System where sunlight is scant, making it difficult to harvest energy from solar panels for maneuvering.
So, each SPARROW will melt ice from the surface of these moons to create steam. This can then be ejected from thrusters to provide short bursts of motion to propel the ball-shaped robots forward. Thanks to the low-gravity conditions, the hopping devices would experience little or no atmospheric drag, and they could leap many miles at a time.
"The terrain on Europa is likely highly complex," [3]said Gareth Meirion-Griffith, a robotics researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), leading the project. "It could be porous, it might be riddled with crevasses. But SPARROW has total terrain agnosticism; it has complete freedom to travel across an otherwise inhospitable terrain."
Extracting the ice may be a bit more difficult, however. The boffins envision a lander accompanying the robots that acts as a base. The lander would mine and store chunks of ice for the SPARROWs to melt so that whenever they run short of ice for propulsion, they can return to the lander to pick up more and to drop off any surface samples they may have collected.
Many of these hopping devices can be sent to explore different parts of a landscape or moon, or put together in groups to swarm a particular location. JPL scientists have partnered with researchers from Purdue University and Honeybee Robotics to develop prototypes using computer simulations. ®
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[1] http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2019-3962
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/06/26/nasa_steam_robot_sparrow2.jpg
[3] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-118
[4] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-9051/free-hands-on-training-google-cloud-run-serverless?td=wptl1956
"so that whenever they run short of ice for propulsion"
I hope that the bouncy guys have a very good notion of how much ice they have left, and how much it will take to get them back to the lander.
Otherwise, if they run out and are a few miles away from said lander, well, they'll be stuck and that would be too bad. I like the idea of bouncing balls for Science.
...steam-powered robots capable of hopping large distances to Europa, Enceladus, or Titan...
Helluva hop.
Hmm ...
" ... using chemical propellants as fuel is out of the question ... "
Place : An underground bunker on Titan. Time: The near future.
A bottle green creature leans back in its seat and steeples four of its front appendages. A similar creature crouches before it.
"And the invaders? How are they progressing?"
"Reports say their mother ship is tearing up rock from beneath the surface, melting it and passing it to their attack ships. These ships in turn are vaporising the rock and blasting it down over the surface, before leaping away to attack another district."
"I see. A curious strategy."
"We are receiving similar reports from Europa and Enceladus, Emperor."
The bottle green creature sighs and furrows two of its brows.
"You realise, of course, this means war."
SPARROW??! Pfft. Try again
Probes
Autonomously
Roaming
Icy
Surfaces
!
Tarrahawks!
See title...
Re: Tarrahawks!
Man, that brings back some memories!
...
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
...
Control?
If the little things can go miles at a time, how accurately can they navigate to get back to the lander to refuel?
Re: Control?
They just ask the local indigenous population.
'Scuse me? Do you happen to know where I parked?
As long as they don't get clamped of course. They should also equip the probe with a little green can with a barely functional thin plastic nozzle, just in case...
Required accessories
I would hope that the development teams have been issued with the requisite top hats and goggles.
Trailblazer!
Ah... obviously very similar to the Spectrum's Trailblazer (https://worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005368).
I'm ready NASA! NASA!
(As I have played Trailblazer!)
NASA?
...
Ha!
Remember the old story with Earth & the "Aliens" (Jovians?) negotiating. Earth sends a representative to negotiate but neglect to mention it's a robot. The Aliens are shocked by the robustness of the "human" and surrender.
Short story. I forget the title and author, likely 1940s to 1960s.
Re: Ha!
I believe that would be "Victory Unintentional" by Isaac Asmiov.
Ah, memories...
"Victory Unintentional" by Issac Asimov (a sequel to "Not Final!".)
Just sublime!
> each SPARROW will melt ice from the surface of these moons to create steam.
Have they missed a step: ice -> steam. Or is the atmospheric pressure really that low?
Pinball?
"It could be porous, it might be riddled with crevasses. But SPARROW has total terrain agnosticism; it has complete freedom to travel across an otherwise inhospitable terrain."
So it lands in a crevasse and its thrusters are pointing sideways at the wall. What next?
(I'm sure they've thought of this but the artist's illustration doesn't show a gimbal mount for the thrusters in the cage.)
>I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...
...robots gangs... steam jumping... deep into Uranus