The Cool Europa Lander NASA Won’t Tell You About

Keith’s note: On 25 May @ScienceMagazine tweeted a link to an article in Science Robotics magazine about a NASA Europa mission concept. So did @SciRobotics. The tweets referred to an article in the 21 May edition of Science Robotics: “Autonomous surface sampling for the Europa Lander mission concept“ written by 21 authors – all of whom work for NASA JPL, or related institutions. Cool stuff – yes? They have been testing it in Alaska. But the article is behind a paywall. I was able to find pieces of the article elsewhere – including a video – but without a subscription to Science Robotics I have to pay extra to read this article – an article written by NASA-funded people about a NASA-funded mission concept. I searched for “Europa lander” at NASA .gov and was sent to https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-lander/ which is a dead link and this page from 2017. NASA is supposed to be making these materials available to all taxpayers. But they don’t. Then the NASA folks moan and groan about missions being cut – and see that polls reflect public apathy toward NASA – when they simply do not have the initiative to highlight all of their cool stuff in the first place. NASA has easy access to immense social media, web, and TV audiences but PAO has no clue how to make the best use of this reach. Just sayin’. See: “Europa Astrobiology Lander Mission Concept: Autonomous Surface Sampling” at Astrobiology.com