NASA Laying Foundation For Jupiter Moon Space Mission 100
coondoggie (973519) writes "NASA recently began laying out the groundwork for the technology it will need to fly an unmanned mission to Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa. Scientists say Europa — which orbits the planet Jupiter about 778 million km (484 million miles) from the Sun — could support life because it might have an ocean of liquid water under its miles-thick frozen crust. NASA said in December the Hubble Space Telescope observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter's moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface."
What's been the hold up???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably the best chance of finding LIFE in the solar system and NASA is still tipping over rocks on Mars.
Re:Thick ice layter (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you ever actually read anything about Europa? There are fracture points all along its surface where the ocean might be very close to the surface.
Re:What's been the hold up???? (Score:4, Interesting)
The plumes are probably from short-lived pockets of recently melted water near the surface. It is very unlikely that they are directly connected to the underlying ocean, which may be 100 km or more beneath the ice surface.
Permanent Habitat? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems a lot more feasible to me to build a permanent off-world habitat on Europa beneath the water, than to build one on Mars. The ice and water would shield you from the radiation normally absorbed by Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere. You can extract oxygen easily from water using known processes. And there is no need to MAKE water since it is everywhere. Furthermore, we are already well-versed in making underwater habitats and the habitat would be easily testable here, so there are fewer unknowns.
You would not even need to sink the habitat very deep to protect from the radiation, it could achieve neutral boyancy somewhere in the middle of the water column, and then rotate itself in the water to achieve 1G via centripetal forces.
It is all about priorities at NASA (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's been the hold up???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Um... Where do you think I work?
Re:What's been the hold up???? (Score:4, Interesting)
He was informed there would be a human shield preventing anyone trying to turn them off.
Not to void your political views.... Voyager probes are by necessity being slowly turned off one part at a time as power from the reactor declines. As more and more power is lost, they've had to turn off things and we will be pretty much done by 2025 no matter what we do. Personally I'm all for continuing the mission as long as there is unique science they can do, but if we've reached the end, we've reached the end.
Re:Looking for life (Score:4, Interesting)
It need not be a revolution of our understanding; it might "simply" lend an incredible degree of support to a bunch of our current theories. We've got lots of theories about life that once existed on Earth but no longer does, and lots of theories about how life arose on Earth, and something like this could mean a ton for our ability to understand such things.
Would extraterrestrial life have its proteins folded the same way? Would it even use the same proteins? Would it have adapted a double-helix structure like DNA, or still be single-strand like RNA, or something else? What chemistry would it use (aerobic is not impossible, but seems unlikely - then again, I'm not a biologist)? There are many more questions that could be asked, and answered, by those who know more of this subject than I do... if we can, in fact, find such life.
On the other hand, if we can't, then that has some interesting implications as well. Are the "building blocks" of life present? If so, maybe life is extremely unlikely to ever spontaneously occur. Is that ocean completely sterile? If so, why is Earth different? What are the differences which could account for that difference, and how likely are they?