Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA has named one of the solar system’s most promising places to search for extraterrestrial life to find out whether this icy world, believed to be home to a vast underground ocean, is habitable. It is planned to launch a probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa. .
The U.S. space agency’s robotic, solar-powered European Clipper spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral carrying nine scientific instruments. After traveling 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km) over a five-and-a-half year journey, Europa Clipper is scheduled to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
After delays caused by Hurricane Milton, NASA has set a tentative launch time for Monday at 12:06 pm ET (16:06 GMT).
Scientists are very interested in the salty liquid ocean beneath Europa’s icy shell.
“There’s strong evidence that the components of life exist on Europa, but we have to go there to find out,” said Bonnie Blatty, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. said Bonnie Blatty, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is deputy project scientist.
“Let me emphasize that we are not on a life detection mission. We are just looking for conditions of life,” Blatty added.
Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft ever built by NASA for a planetary mission, measuring approximately 100 feet (30.5 meters) long, 58 feet (17.6 meters) wide, and weighing approximately 13,000 pounds (6,000 kg) . It’s larger than a basketball court because it has a large solar array to collect sunlight to power scientific equipment, electronics, and other subsystems.
The spacecraft will fly by Mars and then return to Earth, using each planet’s gravity to gain momentum like a slingshot. It has three main scientific purposes. They will measure the thickness of Europa’s outer layer of ice and its interaction with the subsurface, elucidate the Moon’s composition, and determine its geology.
NASA plans for the spacecraft to fly close to Europa 49 times over three years.
Europa’s diameter at the equator is about 1,940 miles (3,100 km), about 90% of the moon’s diameter. Europa’s icy shell is currently thought to be 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 km) thick, floating above an ocean 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 km) deep.
sea ​​world
This moon is considered the “world of the sea”. Although Europa is only a quarter of Earth’s diameter, its underground ocean may contain twice as much water as Earth’s oceans.
“As an oceanic world, Europa is extremely interesting, and this mission will help us understand the complexities of our solar system,” said Gina DiBraccio, acting director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. said.
Ocean worlds could be a common type of celestial body outside our solar system, DiBraccio said.
“Clipper will be the first detailed mission that will allow us to characterize the habitability of the most common inhabited world in our universe,” DiBraccio said.
Despite its hostile and frigid surface, scientists believe Europa could potentially support life. Blatty pointed out that there are three main requirements for the formation of life. They are liquid water, certain chemicals, especially organic compounds that provide food for primitive organisms, and a source of energy.
Europa receives only about 4% of the solar radiation that Earth receives, which is five times closer to the Sun. But Blatty pointed out that Europa’s orbit curves as it moves toward and away from Jupiter, thanks to the giant planet’s strong gravitational pull, a process that creates heat on the moon’s surface.
“That’s what fuels us,” Blatty said.
At the bottom of Europa’s ocean, where water meets the rocky mantle, there may be thermal vents where heat releases chemical energy.
“They may resemble deep-sea thermal vents on Earth where primitive life may have existed and where life may have originated on Earth,” Blatty said.
The spacecraft’s MASPEX instrument will sample gases to study the chemistry of Europa’s ocean, surface, and atmosphere. MASPEX will look for “advanced organic molecules that can provide food for primitive organisms, if they exist,” Blatti added.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Of the 95 officially recognized moons, Europa is the fourth largest after Ganymede, Callisto, and Io. Europa orbits at a distance of approximately 417,000 miles (671,000 km) from Jupiter.
Blatty said exploration missions like this one always reveal something “we couldn’t have imagined.”
“There’s going to be something unknown out there, and it’s going to be more amazing than we can imagine right now,” Blatty said. “That’s what excites me the most.”
