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| This "remastered"
view of Europa is based on information from NASA’s Galileo mission of
the 1990s. The 2014 view more closely resembles how the moon of Jupiter
would look like to the human eye. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute |
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | May 26, 2015 05:02pm ET
NASA's Europa spacecraft will use nine scientific instruments to assess the icy, ocean-harboring Jupiter moon's ability to support life, space agency officials announced today (May 26).
The Europa probe — which is scheduled to launch in the early to mid-2020s — will carry supersharp cameras, a heat detector, ice-penetrating radar and a variety of other gear that will shed light on the satellite's surface composition and the nature of its salty subsurface sea, among other things, NASA officials said.
The newly announced scientific payload "will help us take great strides forward in understanding the habitability of Europa," Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA's Washington headquarters, said during a news conference today. [Europa May Harbor Simple Life-Forms (Video)]
Haven for life?
Astrobiologists regard the 1,900-mile-wide (3,100 kilometers) Europa as one of the solar system's best bets to host extraterrestrial life.Europa possesses a salty ocean beneath its ice shell, and this sea is apparently in contact with the moon's rocky mantle, making possible a number of complex chemical reactions, scientists say. In addition, scientists think that Europa's seafloor also features hydrothermal vents, providing a potential energy source for life-forms, if any exist in the dark depths. (Life thrives at Earth's undersea vents, and some researchers think these environments gave rise to the planet's first organisms.)
Most of what scientists know about Europa is based on data gathered by NASA's Galileo mission, which orbited Jupiter in the 1990s and early 2000s and made about a dozen flybys of Europa during that time.
The new mission, which will cost roughly $2 billion, aims to build upon and increase that knowledge significantly, specifically investigating the icy world's life-hosting potential. The current plan calls for sending a solar-powered spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter; from there, the probe would make about 45 flybys of Europa over the course of two and a half years or so.
"We find that multiple flybys can allow us to get a complete picture of Europa," said Jim Green, head of NASA's Planetary Science division.
In July 2014, NASA asked researchers around the world to propose scientific instruments for the Europa mission. The space agency received 33 submissions and has now selected nine to go on the spacecraft, Niebur said today. [Europa and Its Ocean (Video)]
