NASA robot plans mid-2020s trip: Europa. Wet, radioactive life forms (hopefully). Bliss

NASA is plotting a mission to send its robotic lander to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons and the place deemed most likely to host life. The American space agency has reserved $15m of its $17.5bn annual budget to pay for a robotic journey to the icy moon. "Europa is a very challenging mission operating in a really high …

[Sebastian Brosig]

$$$ Millions for Europa

Just as well it's the US: here in UK it would cause Nigel Farrage to hyperventilate and several of Farrage-wannabes in the Tory backbenches to have a heart attack before they found out they've read the headline wrong.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: $$$ Millions for Europa

The fact that the amounts involved are counted in MILLIONS instead of BILLIONS (or, god forbid, TRILLIONS) should be a dead giveaway that we are NOT talking about Yurop but some bold scientific endeavour in outer space.

[Pen-y-gors]

Seems amazingly cheap

At that sort of price they could probably get it funded on Kickstarter.

[Andrew Newstead]

Re: Seems amazingly cheap

Just done a quick check on Space.com and it reports that the money is to start the planning process for a mission that may launch in 2025. The final cost for such a mission would probably come in at about 40 Billion over 10 years.

[Alan_Peery]

Re: Seems amazingly cheap -- $4.7B, not $40B

The Washington Post is speculating that the mission would cost $4.7 billion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2014/03/05/is-nasa-really-going-to-send-a-probe-to-europa/?tid=hpModule_1728cf4a-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e

It's early days, with two major different approaches mentioned just in the article above.

[Tom 35]

$15M

I expect they could get that by selling an old AOL Floppy to Facebook.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Re: $15M

I wonder if this budget is net of the launch cost or all-in? It may be that the total budget = 15 mio, out of which launch budget = 14 mio, payload budget = 1 mio :-(

[Vulch]

Re: $15M

It's enough to pay for a team of around a dozen people for 7 or 8 years to work out the detail of what will be needed and what instruments can be fitted in to various launch configurations. Once they've got the plans worked out it will start needing real money to build and launch the spacecraft.

[Anonymous Coward]

boffinery

Boffin, boffin, boffin. It's a woody word (caribou nibbling the croquet hoops). What could be better.

Astroboffin!

[kryptonaut]

Re: boffinery

Hadn't thought of that sketch for years! Just watched it on youtube - thanks for the reminder!

[Obitim]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here

It's going to cost NASA $15 million to go to Europa (they think).

Why aren't all the other countries with space programs getting on board this and spreading the cost? Surely this is a worthwhile human endeavour to not worry about borders?

[Ugotta B. Kiddingme]

Re: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here

It's only $15 million because some budget forecasting beancounter misread the last letter of the destination's name

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here

I think NASA is going to continue having difficulties getting other countries on board.

It has cancelled too many projects because of budget cuts leaving European and Japanese partners with a lot of time and money invested in a bit of kit that won't fly.

Chinese, Brazilian and Indian partners are annoyed at export rules that prevent US partners sharing the details of anything more advanced than an Apple-II with them - and have decided to just build their own infrastructure.

And I don't think there is going top be much political will on either side for a joint US - USSR++ mission

[Gene Cash]

Re: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here

Yup, NASA just gave the finger to Germany by defunding SOFIA.

This is behavior that goes all the way back to the International Solar Polar Mission in '83 where the joint NASA/ESA mission suddenly became the ESA Ulysses mission.

One of the reasons that Ariane has so many payloads is because of the US ITAR crap. People don't want their satellites anywhere near the US because the paperwork becomes bigger than the rocket.

[MondoMan]

Re: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here

Errr, wouldn't Putin be the one to go to "...to not worry about borders?" Surely he could find some extra billions dropped behind the Crimean sofa or rolling around the Sochi sledding track.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here

Unfortunately that kind of dosh has gone into dacha pads, not launching pads.

[elawyn]

HAL-9000: [message relayed from monolith] All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.

[Havin_it]

To be fair, that was always going to be about as effective as "Under no circumstances push the big red button!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Retaurant in space?

It would be fantastic if Europa was ejecting hundreds of tons of frozen shrimp into space each day.

You could adjust the restaurants orbit so that it flew through the plumes.

Hmmm, prawns with chilli :)

[Beachrider]

The project is only beginning...

The $15Mn is a FY2015 amount, it would likely recur for 5-10 years. The probe that is the lead-possibility is about $2Bn to build, but that could change. Then there are the costs to get-it-to-Jupiter and operate the mission.

Of course, the $15Mn staffing will look for savings and other activities that be also-done with this work.