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...""

Comments

Thank You . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . for putting the line from the Clarke novel right in the intro and getting it out of the way.

This will eliminate about half of the impulse entries on this subject.

That said . . .

Heyyyyy, how 'bout them Probes! Whoooo! Go probes!

Stefan

Re:Thank You . . .

[Rei]

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.

Plus, it seems that there likely are hotspots on the moon due to radar evidence of cryovulcanism. So, in short, we have a moon the size of Mercury where we have been able to see huge amounts of organic chemistry going on, locations where liquid water even makes it out to the surface, and extensive evidence of hydrocarbons coming into and out from the surface. Seems like there might even be a chance, however slim, of subsurface present-day life. Heck, I wouldn't even rule out life using Titan's methane as a solvent, although it's nonpolar so it certainly couldn't be LAWKI.

Re:Thank You . . .

[FleaPlus]

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::

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= 499
http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Mar03/NPO20609.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ titan_blimp_020212.html

When are they planning it?

[gowen]

Hopefully not 2010. That could only be a bad thing. I hope they attempt no landings there.

ESA and NASA Consider Joint Mission To Europe

[Panaflex]

Hope they get a EuropaRail pass this time.. lot cheaper than the last trip.

Heh, sorry, the first time I read this I read "Joint Mission to Europe."

-Pan

Re:Am I reading this correct?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference?

Re:Am I reading this correct?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not in the Bible. It's not in the Koran. It's not in the Maya Codex.

Depending upon your point of view, all of the above could be construed as Science Fiction, too.

Exploration of Europa

[Aardpig]

There's a good page discussing life on Europa, and the issues concerning exploration of the moon, here.

RTGs

[igny]

Just a concern about safety.

Re:RTGs

[theparanoidcynic]

1) Non-fissile isotope.
2) Designed to survive an explosion and crash.
3) More radioactivity in a truck full of smoke-detectors.

Personally, I'm more worried about the propellants that would spray everywhere if the thing blew up.

Re:RTGs

[Manhigh]

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.

Fantasy, not SCIENCE fiction

[FreeUser]

Depending upon your point of view, all of the above could be construed as Science Fiction, too.

I appreciate and agree with the point you're trying to make, but I disagree with your choice of labels. The Bible et. al. might be construed as "Soft-Sci Fi" maybe, but I'd consider including the Bible, the Koran, and the Maya Codex under the heading of "Science Fiction" (of any kind, soft or not) to be a fundamental misuse of the term. Science Fiction is supposed to be fiction based on science, however loosely.

"Fantasy" would be a more accurate heading for those works, as in "Fantastic Fiction." After all, they include such notions as "magic," "god(s)" etc. that really have no foundation whatsoever in science.

I've always found it unfortunate that fantasy ("Lord of the Rings" etc.) is grouped with science fiction, as I consider the two genres to be no more alike than Murder Mysteries and Romance (which enjoy their own, seperate sections in the bookstore). This doesn't mean that science fiction and fantasy can't sometimes be combined, just as one can have a romance/mystery novel, but that doesn't change the fact that science fiction and fantasy are fundamentally different, just as mysteries and romance novels are.

Attempt no landings there?

[HaeMaker]

You guys are missing the point... We receive the warning *after* we attempt to land there with an automated probe.

I, for one, welcome our new chlorophyll overlords.

Co-operation

[MyLongNickName]

I am glad to see cooperation between the two continents. I know it is fashionable to be pro-Europe/Anti-American or Anti-European/Pro-American. However, ultra-nationalism ends up being a detriment to mankind as a whole.

I hope we continue to build bridges between the continents...

Two big organisations...

[bcmm]

ESA and NASA have both had their own internal problems with communication and organization (units of measurement; Beagle 2). With both of them cooperating, won't they be almost certain to make a big mistake somewhere?
I know Europeans use metric :-)

Re:Two big organisations...

[Rei]

There was with Cassini; Huygens was supposed to enter Titan late last year instead of early this year. They had to delay it because a problem with a radio on Cassini was detected that lied in the firmware (while it was able to handle the Doppler shift of the carrier, it was unable to handle doppler-shifted data due to an oversight in the design). The workaround was, simply, to launch at a trajectory that minimizes the doppler shift, which involved an extra pass around Saturn. Since they had planned the route so well that they had extra fuel on arrival, it didn't shorten the planned mission duration.

Of course, one major problem that had a workaround, and one minor problem discovered too late (the loss of one channel of Huygens data) in a mission involving several hundred thousand man-hours? Honestly, that's not bad. I wish most programmers I knew tested their code well enough to have such a good record (I mean, that's the equivalent of a KDE-sized project). Because while software errors generally at worst mean you have to restart your program, an error on a spacecraft mission can mean the mission is lost.

As they say

[pavon]

Those who ignore the future
are doomed to prepeat it

Re:Am I reading this correct?

[R.Caley]

It's not in the Bible.

How do you know? Perhaps you aren't using the correct translation.

Re:No Way!

[deglr6328]

Oh you mean just like how they "stole all the credit" for the cassini huygens mission when they landed huygens on Titan? Yeah. Thought so. If you had a clue, which by the way, you don't, you'd know that we'd probably supply an orbiter which would communicate with an esa lander. The majority of the science data returned coming from the orbiter. The fact that average joe clueless still thinks that space should be one huge dick size comparison is a big part of what's preventing us from doing truly collaborative big science missions on a regular basis and reaping the scientific knowledge just waiting to be taken from such missions.

Re:And so far....

[fr2asbury]

I know I'm stepping on a land mine even getting into this thread, but there are Christians who believe the whole point of their religion and following Christ is that if you love your fellow person and treat people well, the future, not to mention the present, will be better.
For Christians who feel this way, myself included, we're not all that interested in how accurately the Bible predicts the future. It seems pretty clear to me the future is in our hands. Either we get our acts together and play nice or it'll be just more of the same luke warm happiness and misery.

Some Suggestions

[qualico]

"..., I would like deep-penetrating radar"

I'd like to see a permanent orbiter that can map out the moon in detail first.
Select a target for something similar to "comet busting".
Then drop several probes into prime targets.
Further, lets put some robotics onboard these probes.

Look at the heavy equipment used in the Huygens probe.
Albeit its great for durability, there has to be a more compact way to design the connectors.

Look at these pictures:
Huygens Internals
Huygens RS232 Connectors

Surely you can save space and weight with a more efficient connector than an RS232 jacket.

Look at how compact electronic devices are.
Get Sony to help with development.

Be good for some advertising I'd think.

I disagree with your definition & your conclus

[FreeUser]

Fantasy is a sub-genre of Science Fiction. It contains fictional science. That is the definition of Science Fiction. Magic and trolls and what not do not exist in real life therefore a fictional science needs to be created in order to explain it.

That is really stretching the definitions of both magic and science beyond the breaking point. By that definition religion creates fictional science to explain things, which is nonsense. Whether they are truthful or not, religions are not science. Whether magical worlds can be articulated that are perfectly self-consistent (they can, at least to the "dust-mote" level) or not, magic is not science...though as Arthur C. Clark did point out, a sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from science. But that refers to our inability to comprehend, not a fundamental legitimacy of magic as science.

In any event, most fantasy never tries to explain why magic works, and that that does, generally doesn't do so with any semblance of science, Robert Shea's adventures being a notable exception. Which doesn't disprove my point: a few science fiction/fantasy crossover novels that blend the two does not two disparate genres unify, any more than romance and horror are one and the same simply because a few novels have been written that incorporate elements of both.

DepthX autonomous submarine

[FleaPlus]

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.

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/por tfolio351/pages/352-EuropaProbe.htm (neat painting)
http://www.cascadia.ctc.edu/facultyweb/instructors /jvanleer/astro%20sum01/astro101/missions_to_europ a.htm
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20021102/fob3r ef.asp

Scientific articles:

The Challenge of Landing on Europa
Possible ecosystems and the search for life on Europa
others

inch vs. centimeters

[vvaduva]

As long as they bring their measurements tables with them, I don't foresee any problems. heheh