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\n This artist’s impression shows the Europa Clipper mission, which is headed to an icy moon of Jupiter.<\/p>\n
NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n
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A long-awaited mission to an icy moon of Jupiter is on track to launch in just a few weeks, NASA officials said Tuesday in an event previewing the launch.<\/p>\n
The moon, Europa, is thought to have conditions that are right for life\u2013but with a catch.<\/p>\n
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Any life would likely be hidden away beneath a deep global ocean, plus a layer of surface ice that could be over ten miles thick. So for this mission, researchers won\u2019t be searching for life itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking for chemicals on the surface, organic chemicals that are the precursors to life,\u201d says Bonnie Buratti, deputy project scientist for NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper mission.<\/p>\n
Scientists have already gathered lots of evidence that suggest the ingredients for life exist on Europa, like the water in its subsurface ocean, she says, \u201cbut we have to go there to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/aside>\nNASA aims to launch Europa Clipper during a window that opens on October 10, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe scientists have been dreaming about a mission like Europa Clipper for more than twenty years. We\u2019ve been working to build it for ten years,\u201d notes Laurie Leshin, the director of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be another ten years\u2014because Jupiter is so far away\u2014until we have all the science in the bag. It really is a very long term investment and quest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spacecraft\u2019s 1.8-billion-mile trek out to Jupiter will take over five years. Once it\u2019s there, it will spend several years making dozens of close flybys of Europa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not landing on Europa. We do get as close as 25 kilometers above the surface, that\u2019s about 16 miles,\u201d says Jordan Evans, the mission\u2019s project manager.<\/p>\n
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Europa Clipper is fitted with massive solar panels because Jupiter is so much farther from the sun than Earth. The spacecraft\u2019s solar panels extend out like a pair of wings that together span about 100 feet, making this the biggest interplanetary probe that NASA has ever built and launched.<\/p>\n
One challenging part of this mission has been making sure that the spacecraft will be able to withstand the intense radiation around Europa, says Evans.<\/p>\n
During each flyby, he says, \u201cthe surface of the spacecraft is exposed to the equivalent of a few million chest X-rays. And yet the Europa Clipper instruments have to be sensitive enough to gather the critical information that scientists need to learn about the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/aside>\nEuropa is about the size of the Earth\u2019s moon, but its surface has very few craters, suggesting that some kind of active geologic processes have been working to erase them.<\/p>\n
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The moon was first discovered by the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610, and a NASA spacecraft named after him later flew by and discovered that Europa was likely to have a subsurface ocean.<\/p>\n
The moon\u2019s icy surface is crisscrossed by mysterious dark streaks, and it has so-called \u201cchaos terrains\u201d filled with cracks and fissures.<\/p>\n
Europa Clipper\u2019s suite of on-board instruments, including ice-penetrating radar and high-resolution cameras, should help scientists make better sense of this geologic jumble, letting them untangle how the subsurface ocean could interact with the icy layers above.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are, you know, dream things we could observe, like DNA or RNA. But we don\u2019t expect to see those,\u201d says Buratti. \u201cIt really is just looking for a habitable environment and evidence for the ingredients of life, not life itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the mission is over, managers say that Europa Clipper will be directed to crash land on another moon, Ganymede. Like Europa, Ganymede is thought to have an interior ocean, but it does not appear to be in contact with the surface.<\/p>\n
Ganymede is the main target of a European spacecraft, JUICE, which launched last year and which is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2031. That means, potentially, JUICE could watch as Europa Clipper plows into this moon.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of things can happen between now and the end of Europa Clipper\u2019s mission,\u201d says Evans, \u201cbut that would certainly be the possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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