Slashdot Mirror
NASA May Send Landers To Europa In 2020
wisebabo writes "So here's a proposal by NASA to send landers to Europa to look for life. They are sending two landers because of the risks in landing on Europa. They got that right! First is the 500 million mile distance from the Sun, which will probably necessitate RTGs (Juno uses solar panels, but they are huge) and will cause at least an hour of lag time for communications. Then there is the intense gravitational field of Jupiter, which will require a lot of fuel to get into Jovian and then Europan orbit. (It's equivalent to traveling amongst the inner planets!) The radiation in space around Jupiter is tremendous, so the spacecraft may need to be 'armored' like Juno. Landing on Europa is going to be crazy; there aren't any hi-res maps of the landing areas (unlike Mars) and even if there were, the geography of Europa might change due to the shifting ice. Since there is no atmosphere, it'll be rockets down all the way; very expensive in terms of fuel — like landing on the Moon. Finally, who knows what the surface is like; is it a powder, rock hard, crumbly or slippery? In a couple respects, looking for life on Titan (where we've already landed one simple probe) would be a lot easier: dense atmosphere, no radiation, radar mapped from space, knowledge of surface). If only we could do both!"
I think Europe should send probes to Europa.
Weren't we warned about not not landing there? :-P
The awkward moment when you read "NASA May Send Landers To Europe In 2020"
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
With all the rabid budget cutting going on, we'll be lucky if NASA is still around in 2020.
I always knew there was a reason why we weren't understanding each other.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Pictures: http://www.google.nl/search?q=bassie+en+adriaan+robin
What its from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassie_%26_Adriaan
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I can vouch for Europe, it contains life. Just trust me.
"I never liked the ocean, it ought to be paved over."
Have we forgotten? "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there." (Stupid NO-CAPS slashdot filter...)
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
I opened slashdot while wrapping Christmas presents and read the headline as "Nasa May Send Lawyers to Europa." My thought was, "Be sure to send them all."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
All these worlds Are yours except Europa Attempt no Landing there Use them together Use them in peace........ Better not hack them off, Jupiter will disappear & turn into another sun LOL.
it seems to me that dumping thousands of nanobots across the planet would be easier than relying on one big lander to safely and smoothly land on an unseen location.
i guess the problem is you cant pack nice instruments into a nanobot. or... can you?
i agree. society would be much better if we simply settled our disagreements like they did before lawyers - by having one baronial lord force a group of peasants, under penalty of death, to attack another, in a never ending cycle of pointless, ego driven violence and bloodshed, resulting in the cultural stagnation of entire continents for centuries at a time.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." -JFK
Why don't they ask ESA? I am pretty sure they already have landers there
I thought the headline said "NSA May Send Lenders to Europe in 2020"...
I was wondering why they were going to wait so long.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
This does not sound like a right schedule - as the Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission was put on hold recently. Having worked a bit on it, the expected level of radiation was very high, even when compared to Juno. It follows on a long tradition of missions to Europe being cancelled (see the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter which was cancelled in 2005). Fans of Arthur C. Clarke will see a trend there. The Laplace mission (from ESA) which is aiming for Ganymede is currently trying to pick on bits of JEO science targets by adding flybys of Europe to the original mission plan - we will see how far it goes.
I am writing to inform you that we have indeed taken your warning to heart. In order to avoid making contact with Europa, we have placed NASA in charge of the project, thus insuring that your admonition will be heeded for the foreseeable future.
Yours truly,
The people of Earth
P.S. Sit back and enjoy the occasional fireworks display in low Earth orbit or between Earth and Mars.
Have gnu, will travel.
Here's the problem, if the probe lands in 2026 I'll be 67 years old and I might not be able to appreciate it. Some speed here would be appreciated guys!
Oh, and GET OFF MY DAMN LAWN!!
Ganty
By 2026 Europa will be the only place the Euro is useful currency.
E
saintium@yahoo.com
European study shows fears it might end like when they sent landers over to America.
Disclaimer: Joke may only be funny to Germans.
If there isn't then the whole exercise is a waste of time and money.
Especially for Britons, these days...
From the previous slashdot story about "Rare Earths". The argument was made that the a large moon (which may be very rare) might be necessary to keep a planet's axis from wobbling. But what about an exo-moon around a (much larger) planet?
If having a large moon helps stabilize the earth's rotation, what about if an exo-"planet" is, in fact a moon around a much larger (probably gas giant) planet, just like Pandora in the movie "Avatar"? One would imagine that any variation in its climate due to wobbling would be completely eliminated.
While the "exo-moon" would almost certainly be tidally locked to the giant planet, as long as the orbital period wasn't too long (a week?) the difference in temperature between night and day would hopefully not be too pronounced. For example Io, has a period of 1.7 days. If the moon had a really thick atmosphere (like Titan) then this would probably not matter in the slightest as the "air" would likely distribute the heat quite effectively (but could be windy!).
Another thing we've learned by looking at these moons orbiting the gas giants is that they could have almost any amount of tectonic activity which is important for things like plate tectonics which is sometimes regarded as being essential for its effects on our climate. From super-volcanic Io to frozen Callisto, we see that tidal effects from a gas giant can pump hugely varying amounts of energy into a moon.
Of course, radiation may be a concern for most DNA based life (some DNA based life, like tardigrads are remarkably resilient though). I don't know why some gas giants like Jupiter have lethal (to us) amounts of radiation while others don't. So maybe this is a non-issue.
So maybe we should be looking for exo-moons orbiting gas giants in the habitable zone! How many are there? Obviously I don't know but there don't seem to be any dearth of gas giants orbiting other stars. As for the number of moons orbiting these gas giants, who knows but judging from our own solar system (Jupiter has 33 satellites of which 4 are "large") it seems that one or more would be at the right distance from the planet to benefit (but not too much) from tidal energy. Just for an example imagine if Jupiter was in the habitable zone. All the Galilean satellites except Io would be excellent candidates for COMPLEX life (presumably underwater).
What wavelength radio waves penetrate underwater? Maybe SETI should be listening on those frequencies! :)
FTL communications are most likely not possible with quantum entanglement but could it allow communication without signal degradation?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Then there is the intense gravitational field of Jupiter, which will require a lot of fuel to get into Jovian and then Europan orbit. (It's equivalent to traveling amongst the inner planets!)
Can someone please explain why a strong gravitational field would require more fuel? Wouldn't a stronger pull require less fuel to get there since the Jovian gravity is pulling you there?
Ann Landers?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Note that it says "NASA May Send Landers to Europa", not "SpaceX..." or "Private space exploration firms....".
Private industry can never replace the important need for publicly funded, government sponsored exploration of space.
Lewis and Clark were not funded by "private industry". They could not have been funded by private industry, and if they could have been, it would have made it a much less wonderful expedition.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Of course we could do both. We could do a bunch of them. Just give the F35 a skip or not build another aircraft carrier or some other useless piece of military hardware, or not bail out yet another bank that took your pension fund to the casino and put it all on Red 37. And lost.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
i remember the last great party i went to. tons of lawyer jokes. TONS. not old, not outdated! just like moon boots and friendship bracelets.
A group of congress people killed it , on purpose, by making it pay-forward its pension fund for 75 years. Almost no company could survive that.
Is that what any of the news reports say? No. Most of them say "oh, email killed it". complete horse shit. if they hadn't had to pre-fund their pension, they would have been rather profitable in recent years. Unlike, say, Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, General Motors, Chrysler, and every other bailed out shit hole full of ivy league douchebags and hedge fund assholes.
... oh wait.
The commies are now running sweatshops that make our cellphones. Ah well.
the massive number of pointless military bases, oceans of bureaucracy, contractors that chage twice as much to do the same work as govt employees, contractors with corrupt links to govt leaders who decide who gets the money, pointless projects that spend billions and are cancelled halfway through planning stages.
the US military is essentially one gigantic social welfare program.
the only way to get a space program going is to spread the production out to various places, so that congress can suckle the fat teat of mother federal government and bring that bacon home to their districts.
That's pure spin. Changing the USPS to account for 75 years worth of liabilities brings it in line with the private sector. It used to be under normal government accounting rules, which are a lot more "flexible." If anybody in the private sector tries the accounting tricks the government lets itself get away with, they find themselves on the sharp end of an audit pretty damn quick.
In the private sector, federal law requires you to fully fund a pension plan, including all future liabilities. That's stricter than the USPS's 75 year requirement. In practice they're pretty similar, because you're not likely to have any significant liabilities beyond 75 years.
I was just watching reruns of the old History channel "The Universe" shows not long ago. The ice on Europa is apparently *very* thick (I think the show said 100 feet at least). So, let's say NASA's rover lands on Europa and melts its way through the ice to search the water there - when it takes nice hi-rez photos of critters licking the camera, how will it send it back to earth? I can see the transmissions going through "space" OK (little interference) but wouldn't 100 feet of ice put a bit of a damper on the signal?
The old idiots that think of the cold war as "the good old days" would LIKE another cold war but it isn't really happening. It's just two large countries looking after their own interests.
I know you are getting this from elsewhere so I can be frank without being insulting - don't take it personally because the stupidity is not yours. It's really a very stupid analogy when you think back to the 1970s and not really anything like the cold war at all.
Like, don't ya know, you shouldn't overuse punctuation to make a point! It's so Jersey Shore! Like, when you do that shit, it's like you're saying landing on one of Jupiter's moons would be, like, just as exciting as watching Ronnie get drunk and start a fight in a bar or something! That's the real shit, ya'll. Get some f'n perspective.
For COTS, we will spend .5B. That was a project that was split between 2 companies (well 3) and is about to be finally collected since starting in 2006. IOW, we have paid less than 90 million a year for COTS.
Now, along comes CCDEV,
which spent 50 million in 2010 for 5 companies.
Spent 270 million in 2011 for 4 companies.
and 500 million in 2012 for 3-4 companies.
Now, I am opposed to what the neo-cons (and a single idiotic dem) have tried to do to private space. HOWEVER, the fact is, that O HAS managed to keep the money flowing to private space and yes, it IS increasing. Is it as much as many want? Nope. It would have been MUCH better to have the 850 million that O wanted. HOWEVER, it is 500 million for 1 year, while COTS was less than 100 million/year.
In addition, it is highly likely that next year, the amount will rise to 1 billion or more AND we will see money flow to Bigelow (who is actually MORE important than any single human launch carrier INCLUDING SpaceX).
Basically, USA will be back in space with private launchers by 2014. It will include SpaceX, and possible Dream Chaser. By 2016, we will have 3 human launchers. IFF the neo-cons do not gut private space, we can get Bigelow in space starting end of 2014 (this is still possible even with the layoffs). That is the most important piece because it allows the human launchers to be relatively quiickly profitable. Keep in mind that at most, ISS will only use 1 human launcher a quarter. With the BA unit, they will add at least 1 human launcher / quarter, but possible more.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually there are limits to what gravitational assists can do (unless one s waiting to spend a loooong time, using the "interplanetary highway" of chaotic gravitational influences). About a third of Galileo and half of Cassini's mass was propellent needed for the initial capture burn (and subsequent "retargeting burns" needed by the probes to, yes, take advantage of the gravitational assists).
In addition, neither probe tried to go into ORBIT around any of the moons in which case gravitational slingshots from the other moons would have been useless. Gravity assists only change velocity relative to (a larger) central body like Jupiter when using the moons or the Sun when using the planets. Europa is a large moon so going ino orbit around it (and landing on it!) would require a great deal of additional fuel.
Still, gravitational slingshots are a VERY useful technique for reducing the amount of fuel needed for these missions. Until NASA gets into the habit of using high efficiency ion drives (and maybe learning how to aero brake in a gas giant's atmosphere a la the movie '2010") they are the only way we'll be getting to and then exploring these systems. Sorry I neglected to mention them in my original post, I'm a really big fan of them (I've been fortunate enough to talk with the guys at JPL about how they use the computer generated "pork chop" book of gravity assisted trajectories to choose the paths these spacecraft take).
Given the enormous problems and inherent risks of landing a sophisticated probe in working condition, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to first send some quite dumb but very robust impactors. Gather basic information and then plan a longer duration mission.
It is possible to make some pretty durable basic sensors, batteries and a transmitter. Have a solid rocket final stage to decelerate on the way in so that they are not vaporised on impact. Launch a cluster that separate on the way and adjust slightly their trajectories to come in staggered over time and spread over distance. Camera view on the way down.
Then spend the $5B or whatever it takes to get a more capable lander / rover / driller onto the surface in working condition.
So, they plan to send it in 2020?
How about never?
Why that space exploration is Sooo slow?
Man was on the moon ages ago. Why not everything is not faster and space programs are doign things in the time of OUR lives?
Maybe economy have too much people doing nothing and not contributing and that is why there is so little money allocated to space program? Think about is next time you pay your loan.
If I remember right, there was a much more ambitious plan to send two probes to Europa, wired together. One of them would stay on the surface and communicate with Earth, while the other would use the heat of it's reactor to melt through the ice, sending back electricity and gathered information to the surface module through the wire.
they'll risk contamination just so congress gives them a few more dollars
"Rockets all the way!"
jpmorgan is a liar.
There is no such federal law that requires private companies to fully fund a pension plan. NONE.
Fact is something like 60% of companies in the US offer 401(k)'s as a deferred compensation benefit. That is what pensions are... a deferred compensation benefit. Not every company offers them. But it should be obvious now that there is no federal law as jpmoron the liar stated.
Bottom line, the USPS got shanked in the ribcage here.
They have to pay for 75 years in the next 5. It's not a matter of accounting for it, it's a matter of literally having the money sitting in a fucking account for some guy in 2086. You really want to tell me that this is in line with the private sector? That's utter bullshit.
You are a retard. Obviously not all companies offer pension plans. Companies that offer pension plans, on the other hand, have to fully fund them.