NASA recently unveiled a new autonomous robot named BRUIE that is destined for a trip into outer space. Developed by engineers at NASA, this robot is going to search for signs of life in ocean worlds beyond Earth.
NASA has built many rovers that can withstand the dry terrain. These are successfully being used to explore our moon and Mars. Now they have come up with a machine built to explore extraterrestrial aquatic bodies.
NASA has designed BRUIE (Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration) for a future mission to one of Jupiter’s moons. NASA has plans to fly to Jupiter for better understanding Jupiter and one of its icy moons, Europa.
BRUIE is designed for searching life in frozen alien oceans
BRUIE can explore ocean depths which are normally hidden from view. Researchers from University of Western Australia (UWA) are working with NASA for testing BRUIE. They are doing trial in the Arctic and Antarctica, as the conditions there are similar to those it will encounter on other worlds.
UWA engineer Dan Arthur said, “BRUIE, a buoyant rover with two independent wheels, is designed to drive along the underside of ice crust and uses onboard instruments to detect compounds that are of interest to space scientists,” “In the future, we will be reliant on technologies like BRUIE to enable the exploration of these ocean worlds and beyond.”
