Jupiter’s moon Europa has a crust made up of blocks, which are thought to have broken apart and ‘rafted’ into new positions, as shown in the image on the left. These
features are the best geologic evidence to date that Europa may have had a subsurface ocean at some time in its past. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
around Jupiter, offering it numerous chances to
perform up-close flybys past Europa. Th e team has
planned for this to happen 45 times, at distances
ranging from 1700 miles (2700 kilometers) to 16
miles (25 kilometers) away from the surface, so that
the spacecraft can collect high-resolution images.
The responsibility of project management will fall
on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where a team
has been collaborating with the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to study
the mission concept of the spacecraft taking multiple passes of the moon.
Nine instruments have been chosen to hitch a
ride on the satellite sent to Europa. Scientists will
learn about the composition of the surface when
cameras and spectrometers snap high-resolution
photos and send them back for analysis. A radar
will be utilized to penetrate the icy shell to measure
its thickness and determine if lakes, comparable
to those that reside underneath Antarctica’s ice
sheet, exist underneath it. The strength and direction of Europa’s magnetic field will be measured
by a magnetometer to figure out the depth and
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salinity of the subsurface ocean.
The mission will also observe the surface with
a thermal instrument to look for recently erupted
areas of warmer water. As a matter of fact, when I
asked Dr. Niebur what part of the mission he is most
looking forward to and if there is anything specific
he would personally would like to know, he told
me, “The idea of water lakes embedded in the ice
shell near the surface is really fascinating to me.
And I think that this mission will be able to find those
if they exist. I also think in the future, when we do
land and we do drill, it’s going to be the lakes that
we target, because they are going to be closest to
the surface and easiest to get to.”
Other instruments on board will look for confirmation of water and small particles in the atmosphere
of the moon. In 2012, the Hubble Space Telescope
made a notable discovery of water vapor above
the southern polar region of Europa, which could
possibly be evidence of the existence of water
plumes. If this is proven true, studying their composition could provide clues to the possibly life-sheltering environment’s chemical makeup, making it less
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