NASA hopes to someday use a robot like Bill Stone's DepthX to explore Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter and one of the most probably places in our solar system to support life
Reaching a promising site-a hydrothermal vent, say-DepthX takes pictures and uses image-processing software to discern patterns of color and shape that indicate microbial life. "If you see yellows, oranges and greens," Stone says, "something´s up."
Finally, DepthX takes water samples for microscopic analysis. A machine vision system, Stone says, "will look for things that are critter-like." The samples will be dyed so that when illuminated by light, the DNA of the organisms fluoresces.