A concept of a one-legged NASA robot named LEAP, a space probe capable of looking for alien life in geysers, could be coming to a planet near us.
Given that scientists have been examining the surface of planets like Mars for decades, failing to find life, maybe it’s about time we went underground.
That’s the spirit at NASA anyway.
With a hope to get into geysers, a one-legged NASA robot named LEAP could be the ticket to finding alien life.
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Robot tech is becoming increasingly agile.
Just last month, the Tesla Optimus was dancing, which was a stark contrast from its previous struggling, squatted uphill walks.
Even Amazon’s Vulcan has gotten much better with its senses, now grasping with a good sense of feel and touch.
But NASA is hoping to have its robots jumping around in space in no time, with Valkyrie targeting the moon and Mars.
Now, another machine could be on the way as LEAP is being put forward to help get under the surface and have a good look at one of Saturn’s moons.
Enceladus is one of the 290 moons around Saturn, and thanks to the Cassini spacecraft launch in 2017, NASA got much closer than anyone else had ever done before.
It identified that there is an ocean on the moon that spits out water into the atmosphere like a huge geyser. And now NASA wants to build a robot to explore it.
The Legged Exploration Across the Plume (LEAP) robot is based on an already-existing bot named Salto.
The intention is that the robot, after spending nearly two years orbiting the rings to land on Enceladus, will have one leg and a ball-like body to traverse the surface.
It predicts that the robot would be capable of leaping a massive 90 meters vertically and 170 meters horizontally in one go, taking advantage of the smaller gravity ratio on the moon.
The plans are very brief right now, as the Orbilander – the spacecraft for which the one-legged NASA robot will be made – hasn’t even been confirmed itself.
Still, if it were able to take a crack at yet another planet and its various moons, we could be getting ever closer to finding life outside of Earth.
As one very famous astronaut might have said:
“One small LEAP for a robot, one giant leap for mankind.”
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