“When NASA’s Europa Clipper reaches its destination in 2030, the spacecraft will prepare to aim an array of powerful instruments toward Jupiter’s moon Europa during 49 flybys, looking for signs that the ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust could sustain life. While the spacecraft, which launched Oct 14, carries the most advanced science hardware NASA has ever sent to the outer solar system, teams are already developing the next generation of robotic concepts that could potentially plunge into the watery depths of Europa and other ocean worlds, taking the science even further.”
“This is where an ocean-exploration mission concept called SWIM comes in. Short for Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers, the project envisions a swarm of dozens of self-propelled, cellphone-size swimming robots that, once delivered to a subsurface ocean by an ice-melting cryobot, would zoom off, looking for chemical and temperature signals that could indicate life,” says NASA on a concept for a future Europa mission should they find evidence of liquid water during Clipper.
There’s no mention of sterilization procedures for the SWIM bots, which is kind of important since a stray E Coli or Strep or some other kind of common bacteria stuck to the devices could utterly fuck up whatever that ecosystem may or may not be currently thriving under the icy surface of Europa.