Clip, clip, hooray: NASA says it will send Clipper probe to Europa, will attempt no landing there NASA has confirmed its Europa Clipper spacecraft will head off to the Jovian moon in search of signs of life and a landing zone for future exploration. Europa has fascinated astroboffins since it was discovered that the moon has an ocean albeit one under a thick layer of ice. The water, it turns out, is heated, and kept liquid …
The Clipper will use radar to map out the surface of Europa for possible purchase offers from President Trump. In a NASA briefing he said "Now that the United Kingdom of England is leaving Europa, people are saying that we should step in so America can have the best moons and make the solar system great again. "
What with our introduction of tardigrades onto the Moon, so we will have to be damn careful about drilling/melting our way into the ice to the ocean underneath that we don't do an Aztec number on whatever life there is, or find tardigrades that can't be sure were already there or were brought along from Earth...
Oh if only we had thought to do trials in a similar sort of situation here on Earth. Except we did, in the Lakes under the Antarctic Ice. The Russians did it and the Americans (I think, might have had European input too) and LIFE was found an analysed and the difficulty of the taks assessed and design efforts for how to drill the Europan ice go on apace.
We have to hope the ice, top layer at least isn't as hard as the ice on that comet which got landed on. The testing hammer broke at 'harder than concrete'. Europan ice should be younger and more turned over than the comet's but if they happen to land on the oldest section . . .
I think the major national space agencies are pretty careful about that stuff. The tardigrades episode shows that, as space gets opened up to private entities, they may well not be so careful if they are left to police themselves.
A lot of steps are taken to make sure we don't transmit microbes to other planets. (Remember the tardigrades were deliberately carried into space. And they remain in suspended animation - although if any did hitchike to Europa, they might reanimate in the ocean.)
It's probable that life on Europa won't be compatible with Terran life. So viruses won't be an issue - even if it Europan life uses DNA/RNA (unless Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were right). The risk is life from earth out competing or poisoning Europan life - or just plain eating it. So more Australia than America.
I seem to remember seeing a documentary about the trip a few years ago.
Ah, here it is .... Europa Report
Whose $300m are you going to spend to do it? Or perhaps 10 times that if if you wanted to get to the interesting stuff (the water) and report back. It's a lot of money to spend (and a lot of scientific careers) to blow on perhaps a 15 year project that would be incredibly speculative and have little chance of success since there isn't the detail yet to properly plan such a mission. That's what these two missions will get.
It's easy to say you want the results now but resources are limited and to get any slice of the pie you have to show you are not needlessly pissing money against the wall.
Not to mention, they don't even know what will be needed to make a landing to begin with, or if it will even be possible, nor do they know what sort of protection a lander would need. This probe is necessary to figure out how to land successfully.
They didn't even land on the Moon first go. Apollo 8 and 10 were flyby missions whose sole purpose was to fly there and back to see if it was possible, and to take a bunch of close-up pictures of the Moon prior to landing.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
