Europe has thought of throwing three robots into a volcanic lava tube and now colonizing the moon or Mars is closer

While the mission Artemis II Its objective is for human beings to return to the moon after more than half a century later, space agencies continue to investigate how to reach other planets and there space robotics is essential because well: space in general and places like Mars are the most inhospitable for life.

So a European research group in which, among other entities, the European Space Agency participates, has introduced an autonomous robotic system inside a volcanic lava tube in Lanzarote, like collects this paper published in Science Robotics. Their conclusions bring us closer to a future colonization of the Moon or Mars.

The context. Neither Mars nor the Moon have a flat desert surface, but rather they constitute volcanic worlds where there are underground cavities formed millions of years ago by liquid lava. We are not talking about small cavities precisely: there is space for a city to fit in as long as low gravity allows sizes of kilometers, how this study explains.

Lava tubes are present on the Moon, on Mars and also on Earth, without going any further we can find some in Hawaii or the Canary Islands, precisely where the research was carried out: The lava tube of La Corona de Lanzarote has sections that reach 30 meters wide and high, come on, that It’s a cave like a cathedral.

Why is it important. Because the space environment is harsh: there are extreme temperatures, radiation and meteor showers, a crude combination that makes it difficult for life to exist or simply to establish an eventual foundation for human civilization. On the other hand, if there is any remains of life or frozen water left, these caves are the ideal place to look for it.

These structures are strategic because they function as natural shielding against ionizing radiation, extreme thermal flows and meteorites. So the next generation of robots will have the mission of exploring those underground lava tubes on Mars and the Moon to see what their conditions are like.

The Lanzarote experiment. Anyone who has been to Lanzarote will know that it has places that seem taken from outer space. That is where the La Corona lava tube is where three different robots with different roles began their characterization mission without GPS or sunlight:

• The lookout stays outside mapping the entrance.
• The Explorer: It is essentially a cube full of cameras that you drop into the hole to look before anyone else.
• The speleologist, who rappels down to enter the darkness at a depth of 235 meters.

The discovery. That they did 3D mapping as they progressed was just one of the objectives of this mission, led in the technical section by the German Center for Artificial Intelligence. But what is as important as how: the robots were not controlled with a remote control, but rather functioned autonomously, making their own decisions on the fly. Their performance in collaborative tasks is essential since in space the radio signal takes minutes to arrive from Earth.

First Lanzarote, then Mars. The test carried out on heterogeneous and cooperative space robotics was a success, although there is still room for improvement regarding navigation without light and how the sensors respond to interference from the environment.

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