Operation: Exploring Callisto

Callisto is Jupiter’s second largest moon. It was discovered on Jan 7, 1610 by scientist Galileo Galilei. Many scientists referred to it as “a hunk of rock and ice”, because barely anything happened there. In the 1990s, though, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made an astonishing discovery; Callisto may have an underground ocean! My rover, Astraeus (the Titan god of stars and planets) will see if this is true. He will be equipped with a camera, drill, and a ‘sample station’ with equipment to analyze the sample. It will land just like Perseverance, using an EDL (entry, descent, landing) system. After Astraeus lands on Callisto, he will move around Callisto and drill into the ground at certain places. If he finds water, Astraeus will then deposit the sample into his ‘sample station’ and look at the elements that the water contains. RPS will definitely help in this situation because Callisto gets barely any sunlight at all, as it is very far from the Sun. Also, Callisto has a huge amount of craters, and RPS would be handy because you would need a very rugged rover to drive on that, and RPS is very rugged. I think my power in building this is mathematics. You always need a lot of math to build a rover, the calculations would be necessary to say how long a drill should be or how big the tires should be, and without it you couldn’t even live, let alone power a rover all the way in Callisto!