1,5,1,3,6,1,1- 1Physics Institute III B, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- 2Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
- 3Chair of Methods for Model-based Development in Computational Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- 4German Space Agency at DLR, Bonn, Germany
- 5MARUM, Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
- 6Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Cologne, Germany
In search of extraterrestrial life within our Solar System, icy moons emerge as promising candidates. Previous observations of Jupiter’s moon Europa indicate the existence of a global ocean beneath the moon’s icy shell. As there are only rare, weakly constrained plume activities on Europa compared to the Saturnian moon Enceladus, any future mission will have to penetrate the kilometer-thick ice layer in order to investigate the properties and constituents of the water in the ocean below.
Within the TRIPLE project, initiated by the German Space Agency at DLR, an advanced semi-autonomous exploration system for subglacial lakes and ocean environments is developed. The project aims to contribute to future space missions by demonstrating the following integrated system in an analogue terrestrial test. This includes a melting probe for penetrating the ice layer with a launch and recovery system to deploy a miniaturized underwater vehicle for autonomous investigation of the subsurface water reservoir. The integrated science payload is tailored to allow for detecting complex organics and assessing the potential habitability of both the ice and liquid water environments.
The operational capability of the TRIPLE system will be validated in a test campaign in Antarctica’s Dome C region. This area is of great interest due to the existence of subglacial lakes beneath a layer of ice several kilometers thick. Testing in a terrestrial analogue allows to exploit synergies with polar research, including studies of microbial communities in isolated ecosystems, interactions between ice-sheet and subglacial hydrology, and climate developments. As an intermediate step towards Dome C, the upcoming test campaign of TRIPLE is scheduled for the Antarctic Summer Season 2026/27 on the Ekström Shelf Ice near Neumayer-Station III.
In this contribution, we will present the scientific objectives and the current exploration system of this campaign, and provide an outlook on the following Dome C mission. In view of the primary scientific objectives of a future space mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, we will also comment on challenges and potentials regarding transferability of our sensors and engineering solutions to a planetary mission.
How to cite: Do, M., Becker, F., Bhattacharya, D., Funke, O., Gregorek, D., Heinen, D., Kowalski, J., de Vera, J.-P., Waldmann, C., and Wiebusch, C.: TRIPLE Project: From Antarctic Subglacial Lake Exploration to Icy Moon Missions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-18896, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-18896, 2026.
