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9 May 2024 Acoustics and RF communication through deep ice for application to ocean worlds exploration
Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Hyeong Jae Lee, Mircea Badescu, Stewart Sherrit, Scott Bryant, Benjamin Hockman, Sam Howell, Elodie Lesage, Joseph Vizcarra, Diego Camacho, Miles Smith
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Proceedings Volume 12949, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2024; 129490P (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3023942
Event: SPIE Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation, 2024, Long Beach, California, United States
Abstract
One of NASA’s priorities is the in-situ exploration of ocean worlds in the solar system where there may potentially exist life under the ice shell. This requires reaching the ocean below through great depths of ice at extremely low temperatures. Jupiter’s moon Europa is such a challenging body, whose ice shell is estimated to be 10’s of kilometers thick. An approach for reaching the ocean has been conceived using a melting probe “Cryobot” concept. A lander is assumed to be the platform from which the Cryobot would be deployed. This ice penetrating vehicle concept consists of a cylindrical, narrow-body probe that encases a radioisotope heat/power source that would be used to melt through the icy crust. The baseline design of the probe includes a suite of science instruments to analyze the ice during descent and the liquid ocean underneath. For wireless communication, which is the focus of this paper, acoustics and RF transceivers were developed as complementary systems. The RF is developed for use in the very cold porous top layer, while the acoustics is for communication in the warmer denser ice where dielectric absorption may preclude RF transmission. Acoustics/RF communication systems were developed, tested, and successfully demonstrated when frozen into a glacier at four points to transmit signals over a glacier ice distance of 120 m. The tests were conducted at the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, about 70 miles northeast of Anchorage. The details of this study will be described and discussed in this paper.
(2024) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
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Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Hyeong Jae Lee, Mircea Badescu, Stewart Sherrit, Scott Bryant, Benjamin Hockman, Sam Howell, Elodie Lesage, Joseph Vizcarra, Diego Camacho, and Miles Smith "Acoustics and RF communication through deep ice for application to ocean worlds exploration", Proc. SPIE 12949, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2024, 129490P (9 May 2024); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3023942
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KEYWORDS
Ice
Acoustics
Signal attenuation
Transducers
Transceivers
RF communications
Glaciers
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