Slashdot Mirror
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."
All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Watch out for the monolith!
Follow me
"alltheseworlds" or "monolith"
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.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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?
For a brief moment, I assumed the article was about a "manned mission".
Since we've barely spent any time on the moon or set foot on mars yet, I was about to praise NASA for suddenly growing some huge balls.
Mod parent up! It's cool and all that they're doing a Europa mission, but it's a disappointment to see the arrival dates that far in the future. The glacial pace at which these big missions take place is frustrating to say the least. What ever happened to "faster, better, cheaper"?? If only NASA could get an 800 billion "bailout"!
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
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.
Due to a typo the mission was programmed to land in Europe instead.
Please, please launch a landing probe similar to the Huygens Probe. There won't be any atmosphere, so you'll have to use retrorockets. Impact probes won't cut it. ;)
I've been dreaming about a remote sub mission under the ice. Probably the best shot in the solar system for complex life. Screw poking around for microbes!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
European Space Agency picks the planetoid named after Europe? Who didn't see this coming?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
What a coincidence --- I'm reading "Europa Strike" by Ian Douglas right now. I just *know* there's something pinging under those methane seas, and we must meet our destinies and go find it!!! Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead! We must get the white whale! Whoops, wrong book...
I mean, come on. The Titan mission had an nuclear sterling engine powered orbiter that was going to fly through the plumes of Enceladus with special equipment to study, was going to drop a floating lander with an illuminated video camera into a known Titan sea that could look for floating matter, waves, and detect prebiotic and even biochemistry going on in the liquid, and a Montgolfier nuclear-hot-air-balloon that would study the organic chemistry going on in the atmosphere, make detailed maps of the surface (studyin things like cryovolcanoes and alluvial channels), and after the initial mission completed, likely make low passes right over the surface.
How could they pick this really unimpressive Europa mission over that? Aaargh!
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
...due to a metric/standard conversion glitch, it landed at 320 M/sec^2. :)
The french have reportedly surrendered and the English plan on nuking the crater from orbit, just to be sure. A few Russians were overheard saying, "... it's still got nothin' on Sputnik!", while the Scotish blamed it all on the Welsch who, in turn, blamed the Irish, who dared both to "bring those fightin' words down to the pub".
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
While I'm optimistic that this will happen someday, I'm sad that I won't see it in my lifetime.
Do you have some sort of terminal illness? Are you thinking of killing yourself? Did you publish something negative about Putin?
Maybe you'll make it.
We can rebuild you. We have the technology. Better than you were before. Better, stronger, faster.
How could they pick this really unimpressive Europa mission over that? Aaargh!
The Titan mission looks very risky to me. I think that might have been a factor.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This is exactly what I came here to say (though not as articulately, I've had a few drinks). Did they not watch their own videos? Sadly I don't have much constructive to add, other than a wholehearted agreement with your stance.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
After all a trip to Europe is cheaper than a trip to the moon ;-)
Your wife put starch in your collar again ?
That's a mighty red neck you've got there.
To me it's frustrating to see these missions come into being, with a decade in between, and have a slow evolution in spaceexploration.
Why don't they start multiple missions, in short continious bursts, running through eachother, so we have in a decade a faster pace in exploration, and have data pooring in faster, shorten the development cycles, and gain greater experience in the process?
More modular crafts, maybe a higher failure rate, but greater experience and a list of issues to take it account. It would limit cost in the long run, missions wouldn't have such a binary outcome persé ("if failure, we'll have to redesign and wait another 10 years again").
I'm not an US-citizen, but I wouldn't mind to have my taxmoney carry the financial weight in an international effort to do something like that.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Humans have advanced on this planet more than any other species ever has. We cover ALL OF IT. And in a relatively short period of time. Heck, we may even manage to wipe ourselves out BECAUSE of how fast we have moved. If you look at relatively recent history, we actually are moving quickly. We first got to the moon 40 years ago. And we are about to go back there. This is one of the HARDEST AND MOST EXPENSIVE TRIPS TO DO IN HISTORY. Even the searches by Europe, China, or Vikings did not cost close to this relative to GDP. What is interesting is that this may hold out the most riches of all. IOW, just as Europes moves towards the ïndies allowed settlement, we are now looking at worlds. THe question is, who will they be allied with? The World or nations? IDEALLY, it will be the world. History says otherwise.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
With missions taking two or three decades, many current scientists will be dead by then.
The sad truth is that much of that value of mass production, for humanity as a whole, is squandered by manufacturers when they employ proprietary tactics and unnecessary redesign cycles to thwart the standardization, all in the name of more profit for THEM and less savings in resources and manpower for society.
Proprietary tactics = I agree with you, on the power adapters.
Unnecessary redesign cycles = I believe even manufacturers know when not to do that, since redesigning is expensive due to the engineering expertise required. Most redesigns are R&D efforts to innovate stuff. Would you use a 5th Gen iPod that has the same internal parts as the 1st Gen iPod?
Finally, you as a consumer can generally vote with your wallet.
---
Many mass-produced things SHOULD be much cheaper than they are - cars, for instance - were it not for what manufacturers do to thwart too much of the savings trickling down to the rest of us.
Most manufacturers save costs by swapping parts.
Would you shower using a water heater manufactured using the "cut corners" tactic?
---
Why has NASA's spacecraft and mission costs not came down? I believe you're better educated than me, but off the top of my head, I guess:
Would you like to educate me more?