NASA May Send Landers To Europa In 2020 156
wisebabo writes "So here's a proposal by NASA to send landers to Europa to look for life. They are sending two landers because of the risks in landing on Europa. They got that right! First is the 500 million mile distance from the Sun, which will probably necessitate RTGs (Juno uses solar panels, but they are huge) and will cause at least an hour of lag time for communications. Then there is the intense gravitational field of Jupiter, which will require a lot of fuel to get into Jovian and then Europan orbit. (It's equivalent to traveling amongst the inner planets!) The radiation in space around Jupiter is tremendous, so the spacecraft may need to be 'armored' like Juno. Landing on Europa is going to be crazy; there aren't any hi-res maps of the landing areas (unlike Mars) and even if there were, the geography of Europa might change due to the shifting ice. Since there is no atmosphere, it'll be rockets down all the way; very expensive in terms of fuel — like landing on the Moon. Finally, who knows what the surface is like; is it a powder, rock hard, crumbly or slippery? In a couple respects, looking for life on Titan (where we've already landed one simple probe) would be a lot easier: dense atmosphere, no radiation, radar mapped from space, knowledge of surface). If only we could do both!"
NASA in 2020? (Score:5, Insightful)
Moons like Europa might be best place for Life (Score:4, Insightful)
From the previous slashdot story about "Rare Earths". The argument was made that the a large moon (which may be very rare) might be necessary to keep a planet's axis from wobbling. But what about an exo-moon around a (much larger) planet?
If having a large moon helps stabilize the earth's rotation, what about if an exo-"planet" is, in fact a moon around a much larger (probably gas giant) planet, just like Pandora in the movie "Avatar"? One would imagine that any variation in its climate due to wobbling would be completely eliminated.
While the "exo-moon" would almost certainly be tidally locked to the giant planet, as long as the orbital period wasn't too long (a week?) the difference in temperature between night and day would hopefully not be too pronounced. For example Io, has a period of 1.7 days. If the moon had a really thick atmosphere (like Titan) then this would probably not matter in the slightest as the "air" would likely distribute the heat quite effectively (but could be windy!).
Another thing we've learned by looking at these moons orbiting the gas giants is that they could have almost any amount of tectonic activity which is important for things like plate tectonics which is sometimes regarded as being essential for its effects on our climate. From super-volcanic Io to frozen Callisto, we see that tidal effects from a gas giant can pump hugely varying amounts of energy into a moon.
Of course, radiation may be a concern for most DNA based life (some DNA based life, like tardigrads are remarkably resilient though). I don't know why some gas giants like Jupiter have lethal (to us) amounts of radiation while others don't. So maybe this is a non-issue.
So maybe we should be looking for exo-moons orbiting gas giants in the habitable zone! How many are there? Obviously I don't know but there don't seem to be any dearth of gas giants orbiting other stars. As for the number of moons orbiting these gas giants, who knows but judging from our own solar system (Jupiter has 33 satellites of which 4 are "large") it seems that one or more would be at the right distance from the planet to benefit (but not too much) from tidal energy. Just for an example imagine if Jupiter was in the habitable zone. All the Galilean satellites except Io would be excellent candidates for COMPLEX life (presumably underwater).
What wavelength radio waves penetrate underwater? Maybe SETI should be listening on those frequencies! :)
Not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that it says "NASA May Send Landers to Europa", not "SpaceX..." or "Private space exploration firms....".
Private industry can never replace the important need for publicly funded, government sponsored exploration of space.
Lewis and Clark were not funded by "private industry". They could not have been funded by private industry, and if they could have been, it would have made it a much less wonderful expedition.
If only we could do both! (?) (Score:4, Insightful)
hardware aint the least of it (Score:5, Insightful)
the massive number of pointless military bases, oceans of bureaucracy, contractors that chage twice as much to do the same work as govt employees, contractors with corrupt links to govt leaders who decide who gets the money, pointless projects that spend billions and are cancelled halfway through planning stages.
the US military is essentially one gigantic social welfare program.
the only way to get a space program going is to spread the production out to various places, so that congress can suckle the fat teat of mother federal government and bring that bacon home to their districts.
Re:NASA in 2020? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:NASA in 2020? (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA's existence and funding is practically guaranteed because the US government and military will never allow other countries to exceed the US space capabilities without a fight. Space is the ultimate high ground. The original moon landings were directly related to the US - USSR competition for space and technological advancements. Budgets can always be enlarged if necessary. As it is most countries in the world are still trying to develop tech the US had in the 60's.NASA is still a going concern although some people will never give them any credit unless they produce a warp drive.
Uhhh....no way.
What countries, TODAY, can launch men into space? Answer: China and Russia.
Does NASA have a clear path forward to manned spaceflight? Answer: No - it's many years down the line, if ever.
OK, how about commercial space. Isn't NASA funding commercial space programs? Answer: Yes, but the funding has been dropping rapidly, as powerful lobbying interests (re: Boeing, other established Aerospace players) want to preserve their big cash cows. So wildly innovative companies like SpaceX are in danger of losing funding, all in the name of crony capitalism.
It's all pretty damn depressing if you ask me. I wish you were correct, but you're not.
Re:nanobots (Score:5, Insightful)
it seems to me that dumping thousands of nanobots across the planet would be easier than relying on one big lander to safely and smoothly land on an unseen location.
Yes, exactly. Not only that, but instead of burning so much fuel to get into Europa orbit and land on the surface due to the high gravity in the Jovian system and the lack of atmosphere on Europa, it would make a lot more sense to use antigravity engines, or better yet simply teleport probes to the surface. Why don't we do that?