Mission Statement

Our goal is to create a rover that has the ability to explore Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Enceladus is one of the brightest things in our solar system, reflecting almost 100 percent of sunlight that hits it.  The moon is about 147,572 miles away from Saturn and like our moon, its period of rotation is the same as its period of revolution.  Enceladus is about the size of Arizona and consists of 5 different types of terrain  (fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations) which we hope to explore. We would like our rover to be able to drill through ice to find the element composition of the liquid beneath the surface of this moon.  While drilling we also hope to find the temperature of the inside of this moon with the knowledge that the surface temperature is 72 kelvin. We also want to discover the cause of the eruption of ice volcanos.  To achieve these goals, the rover will be equipped with a solar powered heated drill that can drill through the ice quickly because of it's heat.  Another of our goals is to find if the liquid on Enceladus is water like we think.  We hope to do this by taking samples of the fluid and bringing them back to Earth.  We also hope to take nice photos with our high resolution hasselblad camera.  These will be closer to the surface than any other rover has gotten since we are the first to land a device on this moon.  This rover will be easily solar powered considering almost all the sunlight hitting this moon is reflected.