A little robotic explorer will be rolling into Antarctica in November 2019 to perform a gymnastic feat – driving upside down under sea ice. BRUIE, or the Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration, is being developed for underwater exploration in extraterrestrial, icy waters by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, USA.
It will spend a month testing its endurance at Australia’s Casey research station in Antarctica, in preparation for a mission that could one day search for life in ocean worlds beyond Earth.
The team will continue to work on BRUIE until it can survive under the ice for months at a time, remotely navigate without a tether and explore the ocean at greater depths.
An undated handout photo made available by NASA shows an aquatic rover that uses its buoyancy to anchor itself to the ice and roll along it upside down on two wheels, at an arctic lake near Barrow, Alaska, USA in 2015 (issued 28 November 2019).
NASA is already at work constructing the Europa Clipper orbiter, which is scheduled to launch in 2025 to study Jupiter’s moon Europa, laying the groundwork for a future mission that could search for life beneath the ice.
An undated handout photo made available by NASA of an illustration of Europa in cross-section showing processes from the seafloor to the surface of the moon (issued 28 November 2019). An undated handout photo made available by NASA shows an aquatic rover that uses its buoyancy to anchor itself to the ice and roll along it upside down on two wheels, at an undisclosed location (issued 28 November 2019).
