Europa Questions
If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?, NASA
“Most of what scientists know of Jupiter’s moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Even in these fleeting, paparazzi-like encounters, scientists have seen a fractured, ice-covered world with tantalizing signs of a liquid water ocean under its surface. Such an environment could potentially be a hospitable home for microbial life. But what if we got to land on Europa’s surface and conduct something along the lines of a more in-depth interview? What would scientists ask? A new study in the journal Astrobiology authored by a NASA-appointed science definition team lays out their consensus on the most important questions to address.”
The first thing to come to my mind here, would be: before we figure out What To Ask in this “interview”, we should also decide WHERE to hold it!
That is, would NASA follow their default approach of risk adversity and land on a nice “safe” flat & stable location?— that’ll likely be 50-100 miles of thick ice?? I know, this will be a multi-$B mission, but what good will it do sitting “safe” and sound… with no way to accomplish its primary mission?
Or, given that this mission will have — like the Huygen’s — a brief lifespan, not worry about long-duration safety, and target a deep and bluish valley or crevice for the best likelihood of drilling through to reach the European Ocean?
Although it’s trivial, IMO they need to make sure you can take an image like that artist’s impression is hugely important to the public PR (and they are the ones paying for it, after all.) “Earth-rise” is one of the most published NASA images. “Jupiter-rise” (even though it ain’t rising) would be equally iconic. Because Europa is tide-locked, that limits landing sites to a thin ring around the moon.
If we go to the trouble of getting hardware all the way to Europa (no small feat), doesn’t it make an awful lot of sense not to constrain our investigation to one landing site? Put four less-sophisticated landers down in varying locations (including some risky places) instead of one super-capable lander down in one safe (or risky) location? Or perhaps one fancy lander and three less-fancy ones? Recall the Pioneer Venus mission as a conceptual predecessor. Just a thought.
I think it’s a good thought, Bob. I was thinking even more conservatively. With the sophisitcation of RF communication available and the proven capabilities of small Cube Sats, why not break the mission into two phases. Phase One puts an array of Cube Sats in orbit around Europa spaced for full-planet, constant coverage, as much as possible.
For a first mission, sensors on the CubeSats would be limited to looking for simple things like RF emmissions, mascons, rapid changes in position or radio altitute of identified surface features, spectrographic data, outgassing, etc. Also, you’d want to assign a zero latitude point from which a surface map could be generated for plotting the Cube Sat data.
The data from Phase One would be used to decide where to put down the lander(s) in Phase Two, and help better define follow-on missions.
I just saw a trailer for a independent film about going to Europa, as is typical it turns in to a alien horror flick when they do finally get there.
Fortunately, the trailer oversells that aspect of the film. I was pleased to find that the suspense in the actual film leads to wonder and discovery instead of horror.
That’s some good news I’ll have to take a look at it, I get tired of the space trip gone horror films.