For decades, Jupiter’s icy moons have been considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life. Europa, thought to have an underground ocean and a potentially habitable environment, has long been considered an attractive target in our cosmic backyard.
Now humans are ready to take a closer look at Jupiter’s fourth largest moon.
NASA is scheduled to launch a new robotic mission to Jupiter as soon as noon Monday. The probe, named Europa Clipper, is the largest spacecraft the company has ever built for a planetary science mission.
Assuming no further launch delays, Europa Clipper is scheduled to lift off Monday at 12:06 pm ET aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The launch was originally scheduled for Thursday, but NASA was forced to cancel due to Hurricane Milton, which made landfall late Wednesday near Siesta Key along Florida’s west coast. Kennedy Space Center was closed as the storm battered the state, bringing high winds and heavy rain to much of the Florida peninsula.
The delay was a minor setback in a mission that took more than a decade to plan and develop.
“It feels surreal,” said Jordan Evans, mission project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “There were battles at every level, from the early stages of the initial concept of the mission, to getting approval, passing each milestone and overcoming various problems along the way. At this point, the team was ready. It’s incredible to watch.”
Europa Clipper is not embarking on a life-detecting mission. Rather, they will study the composition of the icy moon, as well as its internal structure and geology. This information could help scientists determine whether Europa currently has the right ingredients to support life, or whether they existed at some point.
“We’re looking for a habitable environment,” said Bonnie Blatty, mission deputy project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We believe that liquid water is a necessity for life, and that it exists. Whether through active geology or something else, we need the right chemistry to act like a battery to propel life. It’s energy.”Parallel.”
Blatty said there is strong scientific evidence that a vast ocean lurks beneath the moon’s icy surface. In fact, Europa’s interior ocean is estimated to be twice the volume of all of Earth’s oceans combined, according to NASA.
NASA
Europa Clipper is scheduled to enter Jupiter’s orbit in 2030 after a six-year, 1.8 billion mile journey.
The 49 flybys of the moon over four years will provide researchers with new insights.
“We’ll definitely be able to tell how thick the ice crust is and whether there are small ponds there,” Blatty said. “As for the ocean, I think we will someday find out how deep it is.”
To make these observations, the spacecraft will fly through a harsh radiation environment created by Jupiter’s massive magnetic field, which NASA says is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s.
“If we were to go into orbit around Europe and do research, even the most radiation-resistant electronic equipment would likely be destroyed by radiation within a month or two,” Evans said. said.
Instead, mission managers developed a way for the probe to orbit Jupiter in harmony with the icy moon. This is a kind of cosmic duet that could help protect equipment from prolonged exposure to harsh radiation.
“So every six times Europa orbits Jupiter, or every 21 days, we’ll be at a precise position in space, right next to Europa,” Evans said. “And because each flyby will be different, we will be able to cover almost the entire world’s moon.”
However, the team will need to exercise patience. Before reaching Jupiter, the spacecraft will first pass Mars and then circle Earth again, using the gravity of both planets to blast it deep into space.
Europa was discovered in 1610 by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. This icy object is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 known moons.
Several space probes have previously observed Europa, including NASA’s Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and Galileo missions, but this will be NASA’s first dedicated mission to the Moon, and will be the first mission for NASA to go beyond Earth. This will be my first time researching the ocean world.
This milestone has been a long time coming for Blatty, who wrote a paper on Europa as a graduate student at Cornell University in the 1980s.
“I’ve actually only been in this role for two and a half years. I didn’t start it,” she said. “But I’m so happy to be back to something so near and dear to my heart. It’s truly a dream.”
Source: www.nbcnews.com
