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ESA and NASA Consider Joint Mission To Europa
ewg writes "In defiance of the monolith, the European Space Agency and NASA are in the early planning stages of an automated joint mission to Europa, Jupiter's watery moon. This follows the triumphant Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn's moon Titan. "All these worlds are yours, except Europa...""
There's a good page discussing life on Europa, and the issues concerning exploration of the moon, here.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
This reminds me of the DepthX submarine which was described in a recent issue of Wired. The probe would drop down, melt through the ice, and then autonomously search for hydrothermal activity on the sea floor.
r tfolio351/pages/352-EuropaProbe.htm (neat painting)s /jvanleer/astro%20sum01/astro101/missions_to_europ a.htm r ef.asp
The group working on it is currently putting together a version to explore and search for life in a rather hostile water-filled cave in Mexico. They've got a progress report here, with many details and pictures.
Some other links related to a Europa probe:
http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/design/europa/
http://www.cosmographica.com/gallery/portfolio/po
http://www.cascadia.ctc.edu/facultyweb/instructor
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20021102/fob3
Scientific articles:
The Challenge of Landing on Europa
Possible ecosystems and the search for life on Europa
others
While I get a kick out of most of these missions, I'm *really* waiting for the next Titan mission. I want to see a nuclear powered helicopter or cryogenic-temperature blimp (two proposals thusfar) patrolling around Titan; it'd be able to visit pretty much the entire moon. Huygens definitely was a "pose 5 new questions for every one it answered" mission. And if anything, Titan now looks even more like Primordial-Earth-In-Deep-Freeze than ever before. ::digs up one of his old posts to sci.space.tech::
= 499 l / titan_blimp_020212.html
There were some concept studies done of an "Aerover" blimp for Titan exploration a few years back. I suspect we'll soon seen those ideas thrown around again.
Post-Cassini Exploration of Titan: Science Rationale and Mission Concepts (compares helicopters, blimps, etc.)
Titan orbiter Aerover mission
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature
http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Mar03/NPO20609.htm
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem
RTGs are for power generation, not propulsion. You could use them to power an electric propulsion system (Ion engines), but the propellant for such a system is inert gas (xenon or krypton) and doesnt pose much of an environmental risk.
RTG's yield such little power that using them for propulsion only makes sense for very light spacecraft, where you can do most of the energy input using the launch vehicle.
Nuclear Electric Propulsion (using a reactor) can generate much more power but is also heavier. So you cant boost it to as high an energy with the launch vehicle, since its heavier, but for sending large payloads to the outer planets, its the only option.
I disagree with the above link's conclusions that nuclear reactors in space have no purpose. Our civilization simply has no other way to get large payloads to distant planets, unless you want to launch several saturn V's into earth orbit and do the assembly of your spacecraft there.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright