NASA engineers have spent the past decade developing a rugged, partially autonomous lander designed to explore Europa, one of Jupiter’s most intriguing moons. The space agency got cold feet over ...

NASA’s ambitious plan toexplore Europa, one of Jupiter’s most intriguing moons, has faced a significant setback. The agency has officially canceled the Europa Lander mission, a project that ...

Hand’s team, building their robot, had to figure out a design that could deal with all these issues. The work on the robotic system for the Europa lander mission began more than 10 years ago.

In the end, the researchers found that 12 of the 49 scheduled flybys of Europa Clipper were considered “reconable” flybys, meaning they could be used to scout for potential landing sites for a future ...