Europa

Europa Astrobiology Lander Mission Concept: Autonomous Surface Sampling

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

Science Robotics via PubMed

May 27, 2025

Filed under Alaska, Analog, astrobiology, Biosignatures, Europa, icy world, lander, Matanuska Glacier, NASA JPL, robotics, Science Robotics

Europa Astrobiology Lander Mission Concept: Autonomous Surface Sampling — Lander prototype during field tests at Matanuska Glacier, Alaska (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is a high-priority target for space exploration because of its potential to harbor life. A landed mission concept to collect and analyze samples for signs of life was developed over the past decade.

Operationally, a critical challenge for such a mission is that the surface environment at the spatial scale of the lander is not well known, requiring that such a mission be capable of acquiring samples in a wide range of surface conditions.

Furthermore, the 85.2-hour orbit of Europa around Jupiter limits direct-to-Earth communications to half the orbital period. Last, power constraints and charged-particle irradiation could limit the lifetime of such a mission to several months.

Lander prototype during field tests at Matanuska Glacier, Alaska (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Lander mission scenarios (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

This article describes an effort to develop sampling hardware and autonomous software to enable such a Europa surface mission. This multiyear effort leveraged development across multiple simulation and test-bed venues, culminating in a field campaign on the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, USA, where a cross-disciplinary team demonstrated autonomous end-to-end sampling activities with representative lander hardware.