Europa Selected As Target of Next Flagship Mission

volcanopele writes "NASA and the European Space Agency announced today that they have selected the Europa/Jupiter System Mission as the next large mission to the outer solar system. For the last year, the Europa mission has been in competition with a proposal to send a mission to Saturn's moon Titan, as reported on Slashdot earlier. The Europa Mission includes two orbiters: one developed by NASA to orbit the icy moon Europa and another developed by ESA to orbit the solar system's largest moon, Ganymede. Both orbiters would spend up to 2.5 years in orbit around Jupiter before settling into orbit around their respective targets, studying Jupiter's satellites, rings, and of course the planet itself. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020 and arrive at Jupiter in 2025 and 2026."

Comments

Re:awww no landing?

[MichaelSmith]

An orbiter is nice but getting down to the surface and exploring on Europa its self is I believe, infinitely more informative than setting up shop in orbit. After all, the data we have on the moon suggests that it has an extensive conductive salty ocean underneath its surface that may have life swimming around vents that could exist in that ocean's floor like Earth.

Nobody really knows how to get to the ocean. It is certain to be many kilometers down. Having said that some seismic data would be handy. Its a pity we can't drop a simple lander on this trip with an impactor to generate a signal. Maybe an accurate laser altimeter would tell us about the interior?

Eleven Years?

[macraig]

Jeez, when it takes eleven years to get even an unmanned mission like this off the ground, I have to wonder if we meatsack critters ourselves are ever gonna make it off again. Certainly not in my lifetime, I guess. I have a hard time accepting that unmanned mission design is still this hard, even after all the missions that have preceded this one! Shouldn't we have off-the-shelf components and some semblance of a mass-production system for them by now?

Re:Eleven Years?

[frieko]

Every rock in the solar system has a different temperature, light insolation, and gravity. Given the different conditions, designing a 'standard' probe would be like designing a deep-sea submarine that could also climb Mount Everest.

Re:Eleven Years?

[macraig]

I think your statement oversimplifies some obvious truths to the point of absurdity. Certainly there will always be SOME components that have to be custom creations, but there should be others that would readily lend themselves to off-the-shelf modularity and mass production. Craft that simply make passes and orbits, as these are intended to do, would lend themselves most readily of all to that modularity compared, to, say, the Mars rovers.

Standardization of key components should be a key goal in further missions. Emulating Charles Babbage's design philosophy at this stage is likely to doom us to permanent residence here.

Re:Eleven Years?

[DerekLyons]

The basics don't change. You need a vehicle to deliver a probe. That means, fuel, engines, guidance system, computers, communications. These can be standardised. Landers need to be custom, but an orbiter needn't be.

Sure, the basic of a Jupiter orbiter don't change. Nor do the basics of a Mars orbiter. But a Mars orbiter isn't a Jupiter orbiter - the orbital environments are wildly different, as the grandparent said... it's like designing a deep sea submarine that can also climb Mt. Everest.

Re:Eleven Years?

[macraig]

I grew up firmly convinced that I was going to be in one of the first waves to emigrate from this rock. How could I not think that after seeing Armstrong thump onto the moon when I was still a little kid? How could I anticipate how far backward our stupid human frailties would make us slide? It's been very depressing for me to have to relinquish that expectation. Looking at the big picture of my life, that single thing was a significant reason for my loss of faith in humanity (and it's been downhill ever since). While there are INDIVIDUALS who possess the vision, AS A SPECIES we completely lack any vision or direction. There simply is no prescriptive Big Picture, not even a Five Year Mission. Humanity has let me down.

Maybe the Star Trek mythos is more correct than Roddenberry realized: it seems that we will in fact need a serious kick in the pants, as a species, from Vulcans or something else just as epiphanal. I wish I wasn't just joking about being a Vulcan Tourist.

Re:Eleven Years?

[DerekLyons]

It seems to me that those missions were faster (or at least no slower) than 11 years in planning, and there were a lot more of them.

And they were a hell of a lot simpler with much more modest science goals.
 
 

So NASA was able to design and successfully produce a common bus and chassis for 10+ years' worth of Mariner probes, back in 1962, but they can't do it now in 2009, almost 50 years later? Something about that doesn't seem right to me.

Mostly because you wrongly assume the 10+ years of Mariner probes used a common bus and chassis. They didn't. There were some similarities in the structure, but that's about it, don't read too much into that one sentence from Wikipedia.

Re:Eleven Years?

[More_Cowbell]

Shouldn't we have off-the-shelf components and some semblance of a mass-production system for them by now?

I would posit that spaceX is among the first to attempt just that. I for one have been rooting for their success, as I think they can bring a revolution of sorts that is sorely needed in the field.

Re:Eleven Years?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Craft that simply make passes and orbits, as these are intended to do, would lend themselves most readily of all to that modularity compared, to, say, the Mars rovers.

How do you know that orbiters don't required quite different fundamental designs depending on the mission? For some missions you could end up with something that is over engineered and therefore more expensive. And how do you know that the custom parts aren't still taking up the most costs? I think the variety of missions and a low frequency of them make F1 cars look mass-produced in comparison.

Re:Eleven Years?

[amygdalae]

My point was that with an annual budget of $17 Billion, it's hard to imagine nasa spending 1/5-1/4 of that on one deep space probe with an equivalent budget of what they were spending in the 60s. NASA had twice as much money or more to go around in the 60s ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_budget ) and they had alot fewer earth science & environmental research responsibilities than they do now. If you dont want to be a troll, you should read the actual budget before accusing them of spending their budget on management, PR & swimsuit models.. I prefer the hard numbers to histrionics and hyperbole. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/168652main_NASA_FY08_Budget_Request.pdf So for 2008 the total budget is $17.3 Billion $5.5 Billion for Science -- 1.5 Earth Science -- 1.0 Heliophysics -- 1.4 Planetary Science -- 1.6 Astrophysics $3.9 Billion for Exploration Systems -- 3.0 Constellation Systems (Orion) -- 0.85 Advanced Capabilities $0.55 Billion for Aeronautics Research $0.5 Billion for Cross Agency Support Programs (Education, Business Partnerships, etc.) $6.8 Billion for Exploration Capabilities -- $4.0 Space Shuttle -- $2.2 International Space Station -- $0.5 Space and Flight Support So if you really break it down the 1/3 of the budget is for hard science & research, 1/4 is for Orion/Next generation manned spaceflight, about 1/3 for existing manned spaceflight (shuttle & station) and the rest for education, etc. There isnt alot there to go around. And if this is all so important to you all, write to your senators. I for one think that $17 Billion for earth & planetary science & space exploration is a pretty sad pittance compared with our spending on same 40 years ago, and especially in light of our 3 Trillion dollar war in the middle east. We can spend all that money in Iraq & Afghanistan but people get their panties in a wad about spending any money on science & exploration. Sad.

Re:Europe ftw.

[macraig]

Cooperation is why this mission is happening at all, but competition is the reason why it's taking eleven freaking years to get off the ground... if budget cuts or other competitive bickering don't bench it before it gets to the launchpad.

Re:awww no landing?

[jamstar7]

How bout we check them out and see if there's life already there first before we go about trying to terraform them?

Re:glacial pace

[volcanopele]

What ever happened to "faster, better, cheaper"??

Mars Polar Lander happened. If you actually want to perform comprehensive science at these targets, you actually need to spend money.

In other words, you can have two out of three of "faster, better, cheaper", but not all three at the same time.

Re:awww no landing?

[oldspewey]

There have been proposals ... one of the more interesting ones involves a surface lander that also has a detachable probe along with a small thermonuclear generator. The nuke probe heats the ice and begins to melt its way downward, trailing a communication cable behind to connect with the surface probe. The ice refreezes above the probe as it descends.

Even if the (surmised) liquid ocean is several kilometres down, the probe will reach it eventually. As an added bonus, by using a radioactive heat source, any "hitchhiker" microbes of earthly origin are neatly sterilized before the probe comes in contact with the liquid below.

Re:awww no landing?

[Iron Condor]

There have been proposals ... one of the more interesting ones involves a surface lander that also has a detachable probe along with a small thermonuclear generator. The nuke probe heats the ice and begins to melt its way downward, trailing a communication cable behind to connect with the surface probe. The ice refreezes above the probe as it descends.

...thereby freezing the communications cable in place, thereby preventing the probe from getting any further down. Pity.

Re:glacial pace

[Iron Condor]

What ever happened to "faster, better, cheaper"??

It omits the fourth free parameter: risk. Systems engineering operates in a four-dimensional envelope: Cost, Scope, Schedule, Risk.

Tinker with any three of these at the cost of the fourth.

Re:awww no landing?

[Muad'Dave]

As I posted previously, using Gd148 as an alpha only RTG will result in no radiation outside the sphere itself. Alphas cannot penetrate the outer layer of your skin or a piece of paper effectively, must less metal cladding.

Re:Huygens

[PetiePooo]

And that's the easy part. Get me a communications system that will transmit first through several miles of "ice" and then the orbital distance without a directional gain antenna to the relay satellite above.

How about the probe leaves a relay station on the surface and feeds a cable behind it as it descends. Once through the ice, the probe transmits to the antenae below the ice, which the relay station retransmits to the orbiter.

Who needs new high tech when we have current tech that works?

BTW, the problem I see it is carrying that huge thermal generator through several years of space travel where disposing of extra thermal energy is a constant problem. There's no convection in a vacuum...