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Tag: Europa

  • Jupiter’s Moon Europa Newest Destination for NASA?

    Jupiter’s Moon Europa Newest Destination for NASA?

    If you thought that Mars was the beginning and end of NASA’s exploration aspirations, you were wrong. It appears the “Red Planet” may have just been a warm-up.

    Now, NASA is moving towards an ambitious mission to the Jupiter moon Europa.

    Europa would be a significant destination for a few reasons.

    First, despite how cold it is on the moon, it is unique in that it is considered the best location in our solar system for supporting life.

    This is of course the theory. Going to Europa could help answer questions about how and why life forms on certain planets. We may even learn whether or not the moon did in fact have life at some point. Who knows? This may be the first step towards a manned mission to Europa akin to what is being attempted with Mars.

    NASA announced on March 4th that it hopes to launch a mission to Europa by 2025.

    NASA chief financial officer Beth Robinson explained to reporters on Tuesday that Europa ” is a very challenging mission operating in a really high radiation environment.” Because of the environment and the moon’s distance from Earth, Robinson emphasized that “there’s lots to do to prepare” for the formidable mission.

    The White House’s 2015 budget, which was released the same day as the NASA announcement, has allocated $15 million in funds towards making the mission to Europa a reality.

    The money will pay for the early planning phase of the trip. It’s not yet known what the total cost requirement will be should serious preparations get underway.

    Said Robinson, “People have asked about the total size [of the possible mission], and we’re frankly just not sure at this point.” She says they intend to reach out to members of the scientific community in order to more accurately plan the scope of the mission.

    One idea involved sending a probe called the “Europa Clipper” to the Jupiter moon. It would orbit Jupiter and also fly by Europa multiple times, sending back information about the water that erupts from the satellite’s surface.

    In order to make the Europa Clipper happen, it would take roughly $2 billion dollars. The cost of getting into space has always made for a great deal of skepticism, especially coming out of a recession.

    However, it’s possible that there are less expensive alternatives that will get NASA to Europa at some point. For now, it’s a step through a door that could lead to infinite possibilities.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Water Vapor Detected on Jupiter’s Moon Europa

    Water Vapor Detected on Jupiter’s Moon Europa

    New research published this week in the journal Science Express has revealed that there is water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter‘s moon Europa. The vapor was detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope over the moon’s south pole.

    Though the water vapor has been detected on Europa, the exact cause of the vapor has yet to be determined. The report’s authors believe that the likeliest cause is eruptions of water on the moon’s surface. Scientists have believed for years that Europa has oceans of water underneath its outer crust of ice.

    “By far the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa,” said Lorenz Roth, lead author of the paper and a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute. “If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean we are confident exists under Europa’s crust, then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa’s potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice. And that is tremendously exciting.”

    Roth and his colleagues believe that cracks in Europa’s ice crust could be the source of the water vapor. Such a phenomenon has already been seen on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

    Europa’s water vapor is slightly different in that the vapor action was only detected when the moon was further away from its host planet. This suggests that Jupiter’s gravity is causing large tidal shifts on Europa, which could provide more evidence that Europa has water oceans underneath its surface.

    For now the information on Europa’s water vapor plumes is limited. Researchers were able to detect them only very faintly using Hubble’s imaging spectrograph, which recorded the ultraviolet light that serves as the evidence for water in the moon’s atmosphere.

    “We pushed Hubble to its limits to see this very faint emission. These could be stealth plumes, because they might be tenuous and difficult to observe in the visible light,” said Joachim Saur, co-author of the paper and a planetary scientist at the University of Cologne.

    (Image courtesy NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)