CBC Interview With Morgan Cable: Robot Snakes In Space? NASA Is Testing Them On An Alberta Glacier

NASA’s Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, EELS for short, is a futuristic-looking, modular ‘snake,’ designed to explore deep space.

But before the device is deployed to one of Saturn’s moons, the science team behind it needed to test it out somewhere a little closer to home: the Athabasca glacier in Jasper National Park.

Science lead Morgan Cable with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory joined Radio Active to tell host Jessica Ng all about it.

Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), NASA

The EELS system is a mobile instrument platform conceived to explore internal terrain structures, assess habitability and ultimately search for evidence of life. It is designed to be adaptable to traverse ocean-world-inspired terrain, fluidized media, enclosed labyrinthian environments and liquids.

astrobiology