A space mission in search of signs of extraterrestrial life has blasted-off on a six-year, 2.9 billion kilometre ,journey to Europa – a mysterious ice-covered moon orbiting the giant planet of Jupiter.
NASA’s Europa Clipper is heading for one of the very few locations in the solar system where liquid water is thought to exist.
Jordan Evans, project manager, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said: ‘This launch isn’t just the next chapter in our exploration of the solar system – it’s a leap toward uncovering the mysteries of another ocean world, driven by our shared curiosity and continued search to answer the question, ‘are we alone?”’
Its surface is mostly solid water ice… but its subsurface ocean may contain over twice as much water as all the seas, rivers, lakes and glaciers of Earth
Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, has been hailed as one of the most likely locations for some sort of life forms to exist in our solar system, possibly in its 100 kilometre deep saltwater oceans which are believed to exist below the ice.
The $5.2 billion spacecraft is expected to start orbiting Jupiter in April 2030 and with more than 40 flybys, it will conduct a detailed survey of Europa to determine whether the icy world ‘could have conditions suitable for life’.
Life on Europa?
Europa is comprised of an ice shell, estimated to be about 25 kilometres thick. It orbits Jupiter at a distance of a778 million kilometres and completes one rotation every 3.5 Earth days.
Its surface is mostly solid water ice, crisscrossed by fractures, but its subsurface ocean may contain over twice as much water as all the seas, rivers, lakes and glaciers of Earth. The planetary body also has a very thin oxygen atmosphere – much too thin for humans to breathe.
‘There is very strong evidence that the ingredients for life exist on Europa, but we have to go there to find out,’ said Dr Bonnie Buratti, from JPL and the mission’s deputy project scientist.
She said exploratory missions such as this one always uncover something ‘that we could not have imagined’.
‘There is going to be something there – the unknown – that is going to be so wonderful that we can’t conceive of it right now,’ she said. ‘That’s the thing that excites me most.’
Clipper is the biggest unmanned spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission, measuring about 30 metres with its solar arrays deployed – bigger than a basketball court. The solar arrays will gather sunlight for powering scientific instruments, electronics and its other systems.
Buratti thinks any life on Europa, which is roughly the size of Earth’s moon, would be primitive, like the bacterial life that originated in our world’s deep ocean vents.
However, she stresses that Clipper will not look directly for signs of life but will instead determine if the moon contains the ‘ingredients’ that would allow life to be present. If it does, another mission would then have to make the journey to try to detect it – for example, by drilling down through the icy shell.
‘We will not know from this mission because we can’t see that deep,’ Buratti said.
Other mission objectives are producing high-resolution images of Europa’s surface, determining its composition and looking for signs of recent or ongoing geological activity, search for subsurface lakes and determine the depth and salinity of the ocean.
Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket carrying Europa Clipper from LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
When its work is done in 2034, the mission will end with a planned crash into Ganymede – Jupiter and the solar system’s biggest moon.
