A NASA team is developing a snake-shaped robot that will explore the solar system

The rover and probes are already capturing a lot of data in space. NASA’s snake robot is now set to revolutionize research.

Pasadena – In order to better understand and explore the solar system, a versatile and flexible robot called EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) is currently being tested at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This is able to map, pass and explore places previously inaccessible to humans. But how exactly does the robot work and what makes it so special?

The NASA team has achieved an amazing feat: a fully autonomous snake robot

Visually, it resembles a huge snake – and the movements are similar to those of a reptile. EELS in its current form weigh about 100 kilograms and are four meters long. It consists of ten rotating parts and a screw thread to drive. With a “perception head” made up of radar and cameras, it is aware of its surroundings.

What makes it special is that it can traverse different terrains, which isn’t always possible for NASA rovers like Perseverance or Curiosity, for example. These include sand and ice, rock walls, craters, subterranean lava tubes, labyrinthine glacier chambers – and all this completely independently, without human assistance. “Imagine a car driving autonomously, but there are no stop signs, no traffic lights, not even roads. The robot has to figure out the road and try to follow it,” explains project leader Rohan Thacker, according to one official notice from JPL.

Sand, snow, ice and lava: NASA’s EELS robot can cross inaccessible places

The project team built the first EELS prototype in 2019, and since then it has been constantly refined and improved. Regular field tests have been conducted since 2022. The robot has been tested in sandy, snowy and icy environments. Hiroo Ono, JPL senior research scientist, explains what the big research breakthrough at EELS is: “There are dozens of textbooks on how to build a four-wheeled vehicle, but no textbook on how to build an autonomous snake robot, which goes where it hasn’t gone.” No bot before. We should write our own book. And that’s exactly what we’re doing now.”