A Heavily Miniaturized Submersible – a Terrestrial Kickoff

The vision of exploring extraterrestrial water findings employing a remotely operated submersible, as proposed by JPL/NASA for the investigation of the possible ocean underneath the frozen crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, is now taking a step further into fulfilment. The Ångström Space Technology Centre has developed a sophisticated vehicle concept based on microtechnology for most of the navigational systems and payload systems. This enables a high function density, and a compact vehicle with a diameter of 50 mm and length of 200 mm, i.e. an overall size allowing the vehicle to be deployed through a borehole like that typical for arctic drilling. Here, the system architecture of the vehicle complying with the requirements on manoeuvrability, operational functions, and mission objectives is presented. In short, the vehicle in the first version will operate in deep and narrow waters, and will be equipped with a camera, sonar imaging system, an electronic tongue for chemical sampling, and a Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) sensor. Although the vehicle will be given certain autonomy in later versions, the first edition will rely on remote manual guidance. Commands for this, as well as power download, and data upload will be communicated through an optic fibre. The objective of this contribution is to present, for the first time, the status of the project including, briefly, the first results from miniaturized sonar, the vehicle bus design, and the design, realization and testing of the propulsion and attitude control systems differing in manoeuvrability, weight/volume, redundancy and efficiency.