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Searching For Ocean Life On Another World
An anonymous reader writes: National Geographic has a detailed article about efforts underway to search for life in the oceans of Europa, which are buried beneath miles of ice. A first mission would have a spacecraft orbit just 16 miles over the moon's surface, analyzing the material ejected from the moon, measuring salinity, and sniffing out its chemical makeup. A later mission would then deploy a rover. But unlike the rovers we've built so far, this one would be designed to go underwater and navigate using the bottom surface of the ice over the oceans. An early design was just tested successfully underneath the ice in Alaska. "[It] crawls along under a foot of ice, its built-in buoyancy keeping it firmly pressed against the frozen subsurface, sensors measuring the temperature, salinity, pH, and other characteristics of the water."
Astronomers and astrobiologists are hopeful that these missions will provide definitive evidence of life on other worlds. "Europa certainly seems to have the basic ingredients for life. Liquid water is abundant, and the ocean floor may also have hydrothermal vents, similar to Earth's, that could provide nutrients for any life that might exist there. Up at the surface, comets periodically crash into Europa, depositing organic chemicals that might also serve as the building blocks of life. Particles from Jupiter's radiation belts split apart the hydrogen and oxygen that makes up the ice, forming a whole suite of molecules that living organisms could use to metabolize chemical nutrients from the vents."
Astronomers and astrobiologists are hopeful that these missions will provide definitive evidence of life on other worlds. "Europa certainly seems to have the basic ingredients for life. Liquid water is abundant, and the ocean floor may also have hydrothermal vents, similar to Earth's, that could provide nutrients for any life that might exist there. Up at the surface, comets periodically crash into Europa, depositing organic chemicals that might also serve as the building blocks of life. Particles from Jupiter's radiation belts split apart the hydrogen and oxygen that makes up the ice, forming a whole suite of molecules that living organisms could use to metabolize chemical nutrients from the vents."
Attempt no landing there.
But seriously, cool stuff.
How do they plan to send communications back to earth from under the ice? I assume they will have a rover on the surface that will communicate with the diver and possibly a satellite, that will communicate with us.
I wonder what they are doing to guard against contamination from Earth bugs. IIRC, the Mars rovers showed up as dirty.
Actually, the first mission dedicated to Europa will be the Europa clipper, focused on Europa, but not in Europa orbit. The radiation near Europa is so intense (even for machines) that dipping in and out of the field in an inclined Jovian orbit will save about a billion dollars over going into a Europan orbit.
ok, so if we're pretty sure there's no "intelligent" life capable of nuking us...
How about we just send a reactor there... land it on the ice, and let it do its thing until it melts its way through? Is it possible to have a controlled reaction long enough to get through the ice... the spread the fissile material out in some way and have it seal itself tight for the next 10k years?
Once through, the reactor should provide plenty of power to get a signal through the ice I would think. Also, the radiation from Jupiter would make anything from the reactor trivial. Of greater concern are the heavy metals it would decay to... But I'd hope we could think of a way to seal it. The biggest concern is: We have no idea what it's like down there. What if its under insane amounts of pressure, as we start melting our way through a geiser just blows our probe back into orbit?
The Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter, periodically dipping in close to Europa's surface. This is will minimize the probes exposure to radiation. This is an important point that was missed.
It with be infinitely easier to sample the plumes than try to drill through that rock-hard ice. Look what it took to get the Curiosity rover to drill 2.5 inches into rocks on Mars.
will provide tips on what not to do...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20...
...making a hole won't create a geyser, no matter how deep the water is.
It is incredibly simple to drill through the ice. Bring a long a one pound sphere of depleted uranium. Before you start breaking for obit, release the sphere on an impact trajectory. Without a thick atmosphere to ablate it, I feel fairly confident in saying that the crater will be fairly deep. Repeat as needed. If you want real precision, I'm sure you can get the military to give you one of the cheap laser guidance packs they slap on dumb munitions. Rememeber that the goal here is to get through the ice, not examine the geology, so I think your comparison isn't quite appropriate.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yes, it is further away, intense radiation (except under the ice), more difficult but then Mars used to be like that (in some ways still is). But rather sending another rover to Mars with more evidence of water used to be there, bla-bla, etc. Cynthia Phillips of SETI said, "when looking for life, go where the water is." And there is lots more water there than on Mars but we don't know much of what is under all that ice. Mars has interesting geological features (forget sending people there, it's a bridge too far and we can't even send people to the moon). But just imagine a submarine taking pictures and video of the little fishies in the Europa oceans. Don't know if there is any there but that first mission under the ice will be very interesting.
mfwright@batnet.com
I wonder if the ice/water transition may be miles of slush, rather than being clearly defined. If so the design in TFA isn't going to work as there will be no ceiling to use as a reference. They'll need to use temperature, sonar, or pressure readings to determine its elevation/depth, all of which will be unknown without sending something else down there first.
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I was not aware that the bible had anything whatsoever to say about life elsewhere in the universe - in fact I seem to recall that it has nothing much to say about anything else in the universe even existing. Almost as though it was written for (or by) humans who had no knowledge of, or use for, anything not directly related to their home planet.
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