One of NASA’s priorities is the in-situ exploration of ocean worlds in the solar system where there may potentially exist life under the ice shell. This requires reaching the ocean below through great depths of ice at extremely low temperatures. Jupiter’s moon Europa is such a challenging body, whose ice shell is estimated to be 10’s of kilometers thick. An approach for reaching the ocean has been conceived using a melting probe “Cryobot” concept. A lander is assumed to be the platform from which the Cryobot would be deployed. This ice penetrating vehicle concept consists of a cylindrical, narrow-body probe that encases a radioisotope heat/power source that would be used to melt through the icy crust. The baseline design of the probe includes a suite of science instruments to analyze the ice during descent and the liquid ocean underneath. For wireless communication, which is the focus of this paper, acoustics and RF transceivers were developed as complementary systems. The RF is developed for use in the very cold porous top layer, while the acoustics is for communication in the warmer denser ice where dielectric absorption may preclude RF transmission. Acoustics/RF communication systems were developed, tested, and successfully demonstrated when frozen into a glacier at four points to transmit signals over a glacier ice distance of 120 m. The tests were conducted at the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, about 70 miles northeast of Anchorage. The details of this study will be described and discussed in this paper.
One of NASA priorities is the in-situ exploration of ocean worlds in the solar system where potentially there might be life under the ice shell. This requires reaching the ocean below extremely cold through significant deep ice. Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is such a challenging body, where it is estimated to have a 40 km thick ice shell. An approach for reaching the ocean has been conceived using a melting probe Cryobot concept that has been studied for a potential future mission. A lander is assumed to be the platform from which the Cryobot would be deployed. The ice penetrating vehicle concept consists of a cylindrical, narrow-body probe that encases a radioisotope heat/power source that would be used to do the penetration by melting through the icy crust. The baseline design of the probe includes a suite of science instruments to analyze the ice during descent and the liquid ocean underneath. For communication, a set of fiber optic wire as well as wireless RF in the very cold porous top layer is assumed, and then acoustic modules would be used for the communication in warmer denser ice over distance of 25 km between the modules. In addition to the acoustic communication modules, a sonar is part of the concept, for obstacle avoidance. The focus of this paper is on the use of elastic waves in the 1kHz range.
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