Testing Swimming Robots for Icy-Moon Ocean Exploration

In a competition swimming pool, engineers tested prototypes for a futuristic mission concept: a swarm of underwater robots that could look for signs of life on ocean worlds. Watch this video to learn more.

“People might ask, why is NASA developing an underwater robot for space exploration? It’s because there are places we want to go in the solar system to look for life, and we think life needs water. So we need robots that can explore those environments — autonomously, hundreds of millions of miles from home,” said Ethan Schaler , principal investigator for SWIM at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.