TPO - In the coming weeks, NASA will launch a highly anticipated new mission to Europa, Jupiter's fourth largest moon. The Europa Clipper spacecraft will conduct detailed research on the moon, looking for potential locations where Europa could have alien life. The launch was scheduled for October 10, but the launch has been temporarily postponed due to the approaching Hurricane Milton.
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Artist's impression of the spacecraft above Europa's icy surface. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech) |
Europa Clipper is the largest planetary exploration spacecraft NASA has ever built: as wide as a basketball court when its solar sail is extended. It has a mass of about 6,000 kg, about the weight of a large African elephant.
Searching for life beyond Earth
The search for life beyond Earth has often focused on our neighbor Mars, a planet that is technically in the Solar System's "habitable zone." But Mars isn't an attractive place to live, due to its lack of atmosphere and high levels of radiation. However, its proximity to Earth makes it relatively easy to send missions to explore it.
But there are other places in the Solar System that could support life—some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn because Jupiter and Saturn, the gas giants, have enormous gravitational pulls on their satellites.
Saturn's moons, Titan and Enceladus, are stretched and compressed by gravity as they orbit their host planet. This movement creates vast underground oceans of solid ice, with plumes of water vapor erupting 9,600 km above the surface.
While we know a lot about Europa after more than four centuries of observations, we still don’t have confirmation that it has a liquid ocean under its ice like Titan and Enceladus. But all the clues point to it.
Europa has a smooth surface despite being riddled with meteorites, suggesting that its surface is young and has been recently replaced. It also has a magnetic field, suggesting that, like Earth, Europa has a liquid interior (on Earth, this liquid is molten rock).
What will Europa Clipper do?
On the surface, Europa is bombarded by high levels of space radiation, concentrated by Jupiter. But deeper below, a thick layer of ice could protect life in a liquid ocean below the surface.
This means we’ll have a hard time finding concrete evidence of life without drilling down. But where to look? By flying past the icy moon, Europa Clipper will search for areas where life might be living beneath the icy crust.
To achieve this, Europa Clipper has nine scientific instruments. These include a wide-angle camera to study geological activity and a thermal imaging system to measure surface texture and detect warmer areas on the surface.
There will also be a spectrometer to look at the chemical composition of Europa’s gases and surface, and to look for any water plumes from the surface. The mission will also have instruments to map the moon’s surface. Other instruments will measure the depth and salinity of the moon’s ocean and the thickness of its ice crust, as well as how Europa bends in Jupiter’s strong gravity…
Europa Clipper will take more than five years to reach Jupiter. And the mission is only equipped to look for the potential for life, not life itself. If we find evidence that might indicate life, we will need future missions to return and explore Europa in depth. This is an exciting opportunity for humanity to get one step closer to finding alien life.
According to Live Science
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