EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) Media Reel

B-roll for media. A team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is creating and testing a snake-like robot called EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor). Inspired by a desire to descend vents on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and enter the subsurface ocean, this versatile snake robot is being developed by JPL to autonomously map, traverse, and explore previously inaccessible destinations on Earth, the Moon, and other worlds in the solar system. The reel includes tests conducted between 2019 and 2023 in a variety of sandy, snowy, and icy environments, including the Mars-like terrain at JPL’s Mars Yard, a “robot playground” created at a ski resort in the snowy mountains of Southern California, and even an indoor ice rink. It also includes a narrated animation of the initial EELS concept of operations at Enceladus. In its current form, the EELS 1.0 robot weighs about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and is 13 feet (4 meters) long. EELS is funded by the Office of Technology Infusion and Strategy at JPL in Southern California through a technology accelerator program called JPL Next. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California. The EELS team has worked with a number of university partners on the project, including Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California, San Diego. The robot is not currently part of any NASA mission. For more information on the project go to: https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/how-we-do-it/systems/exobiology-extant-life-surveyor-eels/ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

What is said in the film

Happening August. It might make it okay for all the community to. Hey, Rachel. Yeah, but I mean, this does have a probably a bit of a. Bias in one direction.

Other. So targeting the strongest jet. A spacecraft would land near the Jets source event in the ice. Once on the surface, the exobiology extant life survey or robot or eels would leave the lander and travel to the edge of the vent opening. After assessing its surroundings, Eels anchors itself to the surface to push against the force of the vapor coming from the jet.

It then places its sensor head into the jet stream line. From this first of its kind surface experiment. Scientists will learn more about the mechanisms driving the jet activity and the chemical makeup of the spray. But to truly characterize the ocean that lies beneath eels must venture deeper. Guided by pressure sensors, eels would autonomously follow the flow of vapor streaming up the vent.

It pushes on the side walls of the vent conduit, where the ice, heated and pressurized by the vent flow acts remarkably like ice. Here on Earth, Eels consists of many counter-rotating threads that act as self-propelled ice skates that grip and move the robot forward against the jet forces. By adopting a spiral configuration, eels adapts to the vents uneven interior it record figures itself as it goes based on the forces its sensors measure from pressing against the walls. Researchers think that deeper down the vents most likely constrict to a smaller diameter, forming a narrow throat. Eels is designed to adapt to this, becoming a self-driven screw, able to power through this point of greatest pressure and flow.

Once in the water, eels propels itself using its spiral threads and uses its instruments to see if it swims alone. And maybe one day on a follow up mission, this intrepid robot might venture even deeper to the hydrothermal vents on the moon's sea floor to search for possible alien nurseries of life.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from [NASA](https://images.nasa.gov/details/JPL-20240508-EELSf-0001-EELS Media Reel). NASA material is generally not copyrighted and is in the public domain.

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