For space exploration, any tool is essential, and NASA knows this very well. Even if it’s a robot snake.
The US aerospace agency is finalizing details for the launch of EELS, a snake-shaped robot, which makes it easier to move on the surface. Their destination: Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon.
Scientists estimate that below the icy surface of Enceladus there may be some kind of life, and who better than EELS to find out.
“Its mobility system is designed to explore internal and closed dynamic terrain structures, to assess habitability and evidence of life,” he says. the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on its page.
The most outstanding characteristics of EELS, NASA’s robot snake
EELS is the acronym for Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, and in English “eels” means “eels”.
In the case of NASA’s robot snake, measures 4.8 meters and weighs just over 90 kilograms, being able to traverse both land and water environments with rotating propulsion units.
The robot also has 3D mapping technology, along with real-time video streaming and recording capabilities, in order to document everything you observe on Enceladus.
Until now, the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in charge of creating it, they have worked with him in cold places, like an ice skating rink in Pasadena or on the Athabasca Glacier in Canada.
When would NASA send its robot snake to Saturn’s moon? For 2024, with a trip that will last 12 years, until reaching the surface of the natural satellite.
In the even more distant future, they will propose the use of EELS for exploring the polar caps on Mars or the cracks in the ice cap on Earth. The uses are varied.
