The drill, nicknamed ‘tunnelbot’, would hunt beneath the ice that covers the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa in an effort to confirm suspicions of alien life lurking in the depths. Scientists have long known of the presence of large quantities of water hidden below the moon’s icy crust – but it has been difficult to reach. A proposal given at the 2018 meeting of the Geophysical Union said: “We have performed a concept study for a nuclear powered tunnelling probe (a tunnelbot) that can traverse through the ice shell and reach the ocean, carrying a payload that can search for nested, corroborative evidence for extant/extinct life.
“The tunnelbot would also assess the habitability of the ice shell and underlying ocean.
“How initial deployment on the surface would occur was not addressed and remains a challenge for future work.”
The machine would use the heat expelled by the nuclear reactor to melt its way through the ice.
The project comes with many challenges, however.
Ice above the ocean is thought to be between 2 and 30 kilometres (1.2 and 18.6 miles)
It would be hard for messages to be able to be sent through the ice, for instance, meaning that the robot would carry a cable that could send messages back up and onto Earth.
The researchers also note that the tunnelbot would have to leave a cable or float when it reaches the ocean to make sure that it doesn’t fall into the water when it digs through the ice.
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon.