Dhaka, Sept. 19 -- In the coming decades, a new drilling frontier awaits, one exponentially more exciting than the desert oil fields that defined the last century. The pursuit of extraterrestrial life on the ocean worlds Europa and Enceladus has ignited what industry insiders are calling the "Frozen Olympics", all with dreams to explore and exploit the vastness of space in environments hitherto undreamt of.

Cold Drill Off

The engineering challenge is staggering. While terrestrial ice drilling operations rarely exceed depths of 3,000 meters, these next generation cryobots must melt through ice shells reaching 25 kilometers thick. Drilling roughly eight times deeper than Earth's thickest ice sheets, NASA's Scientific Exploration Subsurfac...