NASA Laying Foundation For Jupiter Moon Space Mission

coondoggie (973519) writes "NASA recently began laying out the groundwork for the technology it will need to fly an unmanned mission to Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa. Scientists say Europa — which orbits the planet Jupiter about 778 million km (484 million miles) from the Sun — could support life because it might have an ocean of liquid water under its miles-thick frozen crust. NASA said in December the Hubble Space Telescope observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter's moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface."

Comments

What's been the hold up????

[GodfatherofSoul]

Probably the best chance of finding LIFE in the solar system and NASA is still tipping over rocks on Mars.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[Overzeetop]

It's way the fuck out there, bathed in EM radiation, and goddamned cold. Mars is right next door and practically balmy in comparison.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[schlachter]

but it doesn't have oceans.

AND, there are lots of other interesting moons out that way. good to establish a precedent that this far out exploration can be done.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[MightyMartian]

The surface of Europa certainly is, but one would assume that a thick ice layer and a large body of liquid water would provide at least a reasonable amount of protection for any life that might exist below.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[Squidlips]

The plumes make it possible to directly sample the water under the ice and look for organics; a very, very tempting prospect.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[mrsquid0]

The plumes are probably from short-lived pockets of recently melted water near the surface. It is very unlikely that they are directly connected to the underlying ocean, which may be 100 km or more beneath the ice surface.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[mrsquid0]

That is not the reason. The reason that there has not been a dedicated Europa mission is because it will be a very expensive mission and the money is not available. The reason that the money is not available is because the US government does not want to give NASA the required funding. If the US congress offered to give NASA the money, and kept the funding going for the 15-20 years that would be required to do a long-term exploration of Europa, then NASA would jump at the opportunity. There is also a matter of rivalries between JPL and various NASA centers, but a reliable funding stream would go a long way towards resolving those.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[pixelpusher220]

It is very unlikely that they are directly connected to the underlying ocean

You know what's 'very unlikely'? A /. poster having any clue about Europa that NASA doesn't already know in it's sleep.

how do you think volcanoes work? melting rock only near the surface?

Besides, with ice formation it doesn't destroy evidence of organisms that were in the water.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[mrsquid0]

Um... Where do you think I work?

Re:What's been the hold up????

[thrich81]

"Why don't the US ask Russia which one they're going to, and beg for a lift"
One reason might be that the Russians have never (that is - not ever, not even once, not even attempted) launched a mission to the outer planets, neither have the Europeans; only the USA has shown the capability, several times over, starting in 1972 with Pioneer 10 and most recently Juno to Jupiter in 2011.
The US has plenty of unmanned launch capability and does it all the time with Atlas's and Delta's and Falcons. The US has a temporary lapse in human capable launch vehicles and spacecraft which is unfortunate, but that is being remedied on multiple fronts and to extrapolate that to, "the US should ask Russia for help to the outer planets" shows a complete ignorance of the history and state of outer planet exploration.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[bobbied]

He was informed there would be a human shield preventing anyone trying to turn them off.

Not to void your political views.... Voyager probes are by necessity being slowly turned off one part at a time as power from the reactor declines. As more and more power is lost, they've had to turn off things and we will be pretty much done by 2025 no matter what we do. Personally I'm all for continuing the mission as long as there is unique science they can do, but if we've reached the end, we've reached the end.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[Squidlips]

Show me the article that says this. At this point we have to assume that the plume are similar to the plume on Enceladus and coming from the ocean. And even if it was near-surface melts, the ice originally derived from the ocean and thus, because of the constant re-surfacing of Europa, it would still have organics, if there are organics in the ocean. So MrSquid; why are all your post negative? [I think I know why...]

Re:What's been the hold up????

[Ranbot]

but it doesn't have oceans.

AND, there are lots of other interesting moons out that way. good to establish a precedent that this far out exploration can be done.

You aren't paying nearly enough attention.

1) NASA already landed a probe on Titan (the Huygens probe) so there's your precedent.

2) The previous point above that it's "goddam cold" is exactly right. Power sources, electronics, moving parts/mechanisms, etc. don't operate well (understatement) at the extreme cold that would be encountered at Europa. The Huygens probe was only expected to last mere minutes of operation at Titan's surface due to the extreme cold, and you can expect the same from Europa. So, there's a heck of a lot more engineering involved in getting to and then do anything useful on Europa vs Mars.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[pixelpusher220]

Nope, it was a cost cutting measure pure and simple. There's plenty the voyager's can still do that absolutely nothing else can or will be able to do for the next 40 years - measure the heliopause.

They haven't reached the end...hence why NASA stood in pretty heavy lockstep to protect them.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[Trapezium Artist]

Quite. Rosetta has been on a ten year journey around the Solar System, using Earth and Mars fly-bys to wind its orbit up to meet with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August this year. At its most distant point from the Sun, it was beyond the orbit of Jupiter, but the comet rendezvous will take place at about 3AU, before the comet becomes active as it moves closer into the inner Solar System.

As for outer planet missions, the NASA-led and launched Cassini mission also carried ESA's Huygens probe, which performed the most distant ever landing in the Solar System when it landed on the surface of Titan in 2005.

But the elephant in the room here is ESA's JUICE mission, which is a real mission, not a study, already under implementation for a launch to Jupiter and its icy moons in 2022. JUICE will conduct a number of close fly-bys of Europa, but due to the dangerous radiation environment, will ultimately end up in orbit around Ganymede, another icy moon thought to host a deep ocean below the surface. And NASA are also involved in this mission, providing some of the instruments.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[Ranbot]

Thanks for the clarification. I don't mean to take anything away from other's achievements.

Re:What's been the hold up????

[thrich81]

I'm aware of JUICE and wish them well. I wish I had thought of Rosetta and would have given ESA credit for that one in my original post. I was also aware of Cassini-Huygens but finessed that by saying only NASA had "launched" outer planet missions. So let me apologize for not giving the Europeans full credit for what they have done/are planning, caveated with a big, "It's about time!". Europe has had an economy larger than that of the US for a while now, and always bigger than Russia's -- why have they been such slackers in space exploration? Obviously, the cold war competition between the USA and the Soviets gave space exploration its initial kick, but I'm still disappointed that Europe and Japan didn't come along stronger over the last 30 years. And since the late 90's there hasn't been any cold war space race, but the US planetary program has been as strong as ever. Any Europeans or Japanese want to weigh in? Is it that without the national pride/competition thing the US and Russians had, space just isn't considered worth the Euros and Yen?

Didn't you guys get the message??

[tekrat]

All these worlds are yours
EXCEPT EUROPA.
Use them together.
Use them in peace.

Re:Didn't you guys get the message??

[sconeu]

Damn stupid movie. The *correct* phrasing, per the novel is:

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

None of the politically correct bullshit that they put into the movie.

JWST?

[oneiros27]

Huh? The most expensive was $3B?

The James Webb Space Telescope is estimated to be just under $8B to make and launch, then another ~$800M for operations.

An article from 2011 suggested that they had already spent $5B (or maybe it was just that they had only planned on it costing $5B at that point). An FAQ from JPL states that as of 2011, they had spent $3.5B.

If they're smart on this Europa mission, they won't design the mission around low TRL technology.

Re:JWST?

[mrsquid0]

The original cost for JWST was capped at $700 million in the late 1990s. The cost is currently about 20 times that. There are people on the project who are confident that the final cost will be much higher.

Re:Thick ice layter

[MightyMartian]

Have you ever actually read anything about Europa? There are fracture points all along its surface where the ocean might be very close to the surface.

Permanent Habitat?

[brunes69]

It seems a lot more feasible to me to build a permanent off-world habitat on Europa beneath the water, than to build one on Mars. The ice and water would shield you from the radiation normally absorbed by Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere. You can extract oxygen easily from water using known processes. And there is no need to MAKE water since it is everywhere. Furthermore, we are already well-versed in making underwater habitats and the habitat would be easily testable here, so there are fewer unknowns.

You would not even need to sink the habitat very deep to protect from the radiation, it could achieve neutral boyancy somewhere in the middle of the water column, and then rotate itself in the water to achieve 1G via centripetal forces.

Re:Permanent Habitat?

[thunrida]

All fine, but where do you get your energy from? Might be a bit far for solar...

Re:Permanent Habitat?

[brunes69]

Nuclear. If it can power a sub for years, it can power a station on Europa.

Re:Permanent Habitat?

[KeensMustard]

Sudden evacuation might be problematic. But with less serious problems, the lower transit time to Mars vs. Europa might be advantageous.

Evacuate to where? Depending on time, Earth is months to years away in terms of transit time from Mars, even then there is the huge, obvious problem of how to get down from orbit, if you achieve orbit once you arrive. And this is assuming that there is a craft there on Mars, fuelled and maintained.

But with less serious problems, the lower transit time to Mars vs. Europa might be advantageous.

At those scales, it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Radiation is a problem, though. Shielded habitats would be a high priority. Either underground, or possibly by using water (produced on-site) as shielding.

Unless you land near the poles, there are only trace quantities of water left on Mars in the soil (most of it having sublimated off in the low atmosphere. To extract those quantities of water from the ground (that is, 20000 litres per habitat) would require a facility the size of a longwall open cut mine.

To dig an underground habitat you would need a machine, or you could chance it with a shovel, but then if there was subsidence there is no concrete and no iron to or handy blocks of wood to stay your habitat, you would need to take an inner shell with you and somehow dig a hole and construct the shelter from parts, and make it air tight, sufficient such that no atmosphere at all escaped, or I suppose you could shotcrete the inside by bringing the shotcrete with you - including of course the water or water equivalent, and you would need to be pretty good at shotcreting to guarantee air tightness. Sounds chancey.

And you would still need some sort of facility to grow plants or algae to eat. On earth the average is what? An acre to feed a human? Let's say technology allows us to halve that, and then multiply for the difficult conditions on Mars (plant physiology is unlikely to adapt any better than our own suffering physiology, maybe 2 acres, optimistically, per cosmonaut (let's say 6), that's 12 acres. I doubt you could manually dig and shotcrete a facility covering 12 acres underground.

All in all I would say, not well thought out.

Re:Thick ice layter

[pixelpusher220]

We'll never get through the thick ice layer.

We'll never be able to fly
We'll never be able to go into space
We'll never be able to land on the moon
We'll never be able to have civil and informative political discussions....

Ok, the 4th might be true, but 'never' and human ingenuity shouldn't be lumped together very often.

Re:Looking for life

[MightyMartian]

To actually find evidence of extraterrestrial life, even if it's simply microbes, would represent a pretty major revolution in our understanding of life in general, and a pretty good pointer that life is common in the Universe.

It is all about priorities at NASA

[Squidlips]

Some expenses: --Space Station: the estimates start at roughly $35 billion — which is what the Government Accountability Office says Congress has appropriated for the station project since 1985 (PDF file) — and rise to $100 billion, which is roughly what the GAO said would be the total cost "to develop, assemble and operate" the station (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14505278/ns/technology_and_science-space/) --The Space Shuttle Endeavour, the orbiter built to replace the Space Shuttle Challenger, cost approximately $1.7 billion. --Launching the Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission --The MSL Mars rover ~$1.8 to build and another ~.5b or so to launch and run. --The two MER Mars rovers: $800 million --Second toilet for the Space Station (purchased from the Russians): $17 million. --Amount of money allocated to the Europa Missions in 2015: $15 million.

Re:Looking for life

[cbhacking]

It need not be a revolution of our understanding; it might "simply" lend an incredible degree of support to a bunch of our current theories. We've got lots of theories about life that once existed on Earth but no longer does, and lots of theories about how life arose on Earth, and something like this could mean a ton for our ability to understand such things.

Would extraterrestrial life have its proteins folded the same way? Would it even use the same proteins? Would it have adapted a double-helix structure like DNA, or still be single-strand like RNA, or something else? What chemistry would it use (aerobic is not impossible, but seems unlikely - then again, I'm not a biologist)? There are many more questions that could be asked, and answered, by those who know more of this subject than I do... if we can, in fact, find such life.

On the other hand, if we can't, then that has some interesting implications as well. Are the "building blocks" of life present? If so, maybe life is extremely unlikely to ever spontaneously occur. Is that ocean completely sterile? If so, why is Earth different? What are the differences which could account for that difference, and how likely are they?