Ice worlds are at the forefront of astrobiological interest because of the evidence of subsurface oceans. Enceladus in particular is unique among the icy moons because there are known vent systems that are likely connected to a subsurface ocean, through which the ocean water is ejected to space. An existing study has shown that sending small robots into the vents and directly sampling the ocean water is likely possible. To enable such a mission, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a snake-like robot called Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) that can navigate Enceladus’ extreme surface and descend an erupting vent to capture unaltered liquid samples and potentially reach the ocean. However, navigating to and through Enceladus’ environment is challenging: Because of the limitations of existing orbital reconnaissance, there is substantial uncertainty with respect to its geometry and the physical properties of the surface/vents; communication is limited, which requires highly autonomous robots to execute the mission with limited human supervision. Here, we provide an overview of the EELS project and its development effort to create a risk-aware autonomous robot to navigate these extreme ice terrains/environments. We describe the robot’s architecture and the technical challenges to navigate and sense the icy environment safely and effectively. We focus on the challenges related to surface mobility, task and motion planning under uncertainty, and risk quantification. We provide initial results on mobility and risk-aware task and motion planning from field tests and simulated scenarios.

HeliCAT-DARTS is a high-fidelity rotorcraft dynamics simulator developed for the design and development of rotorcraft for planetary exploration. While initially developed for the life cycle use of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter mission, the simulator now supports a broad range of rotorcraft configurations and applications. HeliCAT provides a GNC testbed and aerial mobility analysis platform for rotorcraft design, closed-loop flight software development, verification and validation (V&V), and mission operations. This article discusses the design and use of the HeliCAT simulator and results from technology demonstrations and missions.

EELS-DARTS is a simulator designed for autonomy development and analysis of large degree of freedom snake-like robots for space exploration. A detailed description of the EELS-DARTS simulator design is presented. This includes the versatile underlying multibody dynamics representation used to model a variety of distinct snake robot configurations as well as an anisotropic friction model for describing screw–ice interaction. Additional simulation components such as graphics, importable terrain, joint controllers, and perception are discussed. Methods for setting up and running simulations are discussed, including how a snake robot’s autonomy stack closes the commands and information loop with the simulation via ROS. Multiple use cases are described to illustrate how the simulation is used to aid and inform robot design, autonomy development, and field test use throughout the project’s life cycle. A validation analysis of the screw–ice contact model is performed for the surface mobility case. Lastly, an overview of simulation use for planning operations during a recent field test to the Athabasca Glacier in Canada is discussed.