NASA funds PRAXIS concept to sample particles from planet rings
NASA has awarded phase-one funding under its Innovative Advanced Concepts programme to PRAXIS, short for Planetary Rings Autonomous Exploration with In-situ Sampling. The concept envisions a bio-inspired robotic explorer, guided by an artificial-intelligence model, that would fly through and directly collect particles from a planet's ring system, something no mission has tried. It targets questions raised by NASA's Planetary Science Decadal Survey.