Science Report on Europa Lander Concept given to NASA
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| Concept for the Europa lander by NASA |
Nasa has just received a report on the potential science value of a lander on the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, back in early 2016, in response to a congressional directive, NASA’s Planetary Science Division began a pre-Phase A study to assess the science value and engineering design of a future Europa lander mission.
It is known that NASA routinely conducts such studies which are called Science Definition Team (SDT) reports. In June 2016, NASA convened a 21-member team of scientists for the SDT. Since then, the team has deliberated to define a workable and worthy set of science objectives and measurements for the mission concept, submitting a report to NASA on February 7.
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| Jupiter’s moon Europa see by the Voyager 2 on July 1979. Credit: NASA |
A report which lists three science goals for the mission, and of course the primary goal of these is to search for evidence of life on Europa. The other two are to assess the habitability of Europa by directly analyzing material from the surface, and to characterize the surface and subsurface to support future robotic exploration of Europa and its ocean. This report also describes some of the notional instruments that could be expected to perform measurements in support of these goals.
Scientists agree that there is quite strong evidence for the Jupiter moon Europa, having a global saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust, a world that is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. The ocean potentially will have at least twice as much water as Earth’s oceans. Recent discoveries have shown that many bodies in the solar system either have subsurface oceans now, or may have in the past, however in Europa this ocean is understood to be in contact with a rocky seafloor, there is another place like it, Saturn's moon Enceladus.
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| Enhanced colour image mosaic of Europa ’s surface obtained by spacecraft Galileo. Credit: NASA |
This is rare circumstance, something which makes Europa a top candidate for the search of present-day life beyond our own Earth. But why is Europa considered by many to be the most likely place in the Solar System to find life? This would be, the evidence of liquid water, consider one of the requisites for the emergence of life, others reasons are having an energy source, that could be found at the bottom of the ocean such in hydrothermal vent and having organic compounds to use as the building blocks for biological processes, this and the possibility of that ocean which that ocean may have existed for the whole age of the Solar System and thus giving life a chance to develop.
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| Hydrothermal vent at the bottom of the ocean on Earth. Wikipedia. |
The SDT team were given the task of developing a life-detection strategy, a first for a NASA mission since the Mars Viking mission era in the 70s. The team also worked closely with engineers to design a system capable of landing on a surface about which very little is known. The landing system devised consist in a concept that could deliver its science payload to the icy surface without the benefit of technologies like a heat shield or parachutes.
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| Concept of the interior of Europa and how its ocean may be. Credit: NASA. |
This lander is separate from the solar-powered Europa multiple flyby mission, now in development for launch in the early 2020s. The spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter after a multi-year journey, orbiting the gas giant every two weeks for a series of 45 close flybys of Europa.
To read the complete report visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/technical.cfm
Sources: NASA, Wikipedia
