For decades many people have been looking for alien life everywhere, we have sent rovers and landers to Mars, mapped out icy moons, and even sent signals out to distant planets. And these have helped us find clues that help support this theory. But we have had no luck in finding the solid proof which is finding some kind of life from. This has caused debate in the space community about why we have at least not found microscopic life. Some people think that we are alone in the universe, others dismiss this idea and say that we are doing something wrong. And then there is a third section of people that think we should try different ways to detect life. And this is what a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California is trying to do using different and new technology to find life.

Snake-Bot

NASA is currently testing a spacecraft called the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, however, the mission team that is using the robot calls it EELS. This is a spacecraft that is designed to look and work like a snake. While it may sound crazy and a little creepy, it is also very useful for finding life. 

“It has the capability to go to locations where other robots can’t go. Though some robots are better at one particular type of terrain or other, the idea for EELS is the ability to do it all,” says Matthew Robinson, EELS project manager. “When you’re going places where you don’t know what you’ll find, you want to send a versatile, risk-aware robot that’s prepared for uncertainty – and can make decisions on its own.” Like a Snake, EELS can shrink its size in width to make it thinner at times. The robot is equipped with sensors and cameras to help it from falling and other objects. The snake also has an interesting way of getting around. It has small wheels that roll itself at a top speed of 4 miles per hour. Which means it would take about a few hours to cover the distance of one football field. But in another icy and cold world, it’s okay to slow down. 

Survival 

The robot snake, much like normal snakes also has its survival tactics, the spacecraft has been programmed to keep itself in working order for as long as possible. The idea of the snake was for it to work with limited human help and it decided which option is the best. The snake is expected to be moving around and inside caves. And these caves have some deadly drops from anywhere from 30 feet to 100 that could easily cause a robot to fall and crash onto the surface. 

“Imagine a car driving autonomously, but there are no stop signs, no traffic signals, not even any roads. The robot has to figure out what the road is and try to follow it,” says the project’s autonomy lead, Rohan Thakker. “Then it needs to go down a 100-foot drop and not fall.”  

And to help with this EELS creates a 3D map of its surroundings using multiple pairs of cameras and a new technology called lidar, which is similar to radar but uses more effective laser pulses instead of radio waves. This helps it give a new view of underground caves. 

When Will It Be Used?

EELS is a very interesting and unique way of technology and could be used sometime in the future. Unfortunately, to use it NASA would most likely have to invest billions of dollars to send to its destination a rocket. And NASA has other current goals like to o land people back on the moon sometime in the next few years. But this technology way make its way to alien words one day.