NASA to send mission to discover truth.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is believed to have an ocean just beneath its frozen crust, and many scientists believe conditions could be conducive to supporting life.
In order to glean more of Europa’s secrets, NASA is prepping to send a spacecraft more, and the planned mission has just passed its first internal review, according to the Huffington Post, and is now headed to the phase of development called formulation.
If everything stays on track, the spacecraft is slated to launch in the 2020s on a journey that will take several years to reach fruition.
Once it arrives, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter rather than the moon itself, because Europa is regularly bathed in radiation from Jupiter.
“Any mission that goes in the vicinity of Europa is cooked pretty quickly. Instead we’re looking at a mission that would orbit Jupiter, make close flybys of Europa, and then zip out of the high-radiation region,” said project scientist Robert Pappalardo.
The probe would be able to complete an orbit around Jupiter fortnightly, allowing for about 45 flybys, according to AOL News.
Per NASA’s mission parameters:
The selected payload includes cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images of Europa’s surface and determine its composition. An ice penetrating radar will determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and search for subsurface lakes similar to those beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet. The mission will also carry a magnetometer to measure the strength and direction of the moon’s magnetic field, which will allow scientists to determine the depth and salinity of its ocean.
Europa is one of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter, which the largest planet in our solar system. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei is given credit for discovering Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto in 1610, and so the four are known as Galilean satellites or moons.
“Today we’re taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of life beyond Earth,” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a news release. “Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek answers to one of humanity’s most profound questions.”