NASA’s Europa Clipper mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.
NASA’s Europa Clipper is the first mission designed to conduct a detailed study of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Europa Clipper will search for signs of habitability, and aid in the selection of a landing site for the future Europa Lander.
There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life may exist on Europa. The goals of the mission are focused on understanding the three main requirements for life: liquid water, chemistry, and energy.
Europa: An Ocean World
Q: Liquid Water – on a moon of Jupiter?
A: “Scientists concluded that Europa is a “water world” primarily due to observations from spacecraft like Galileo, which revealed a deformed surface with evidence of recent geological activity, a strong induced magnetic field (indicating a conductive saltwater ocean beneath the surface), and surface features like cracks that suggest a subsurface ocean is present under Europa’s icy crust; this evidence, combined with analysis of its composition, points to a global ocean of liquid water hidden beneath the surface.” – Google AI Overview
Editor’s note: NASA loves to think that their spacecraft discovered things no one ever knew but in fact the idea that Europa was an icy world dates back to work by the great geophysicist Harold Jeffreys in 1923, and the first models that suggested Europa had an ocean under an icy crust are due to John Lewis, published in 1971. Br. Guy wrote his Master’s thesis under Professor Lewis on this topic in 1975… long before NASA spacecraft had sent back any useful data on these moons.
Image caption: View of a small region of the thin, disrupted, ice crust in the Conamara region of Jupiter’s moon Europa showing the interplay of surface color with ice structures. The white and blue colors outline areas that have been blanketed by a fine dust of ice particles ejected at the time of formation of the large (16 miles or 26 kilometer in diameter) crater Pwyll some 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) to the south. A few small craters of less than 547 yards (500 meters) in diameter can be seen associated with these regions. These were probably formed, at the same time as the blanketing occurred, by large, intact, blocks of ice thrown up in the impact explosion that formed Pwyll. The unblanketed surface has a reddish brown color that has been painted by mineral contaminants carried and spread by water vapor released from below the crust when it was disrupted.
Image caption: This graphic shows Europa’s icy shell, with many estimates ranging from approximately 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 kilometers) thick. Researchers believe that tidal heating impacts the layer between the ice and the ocean, and that some of the heat might be transferred through the ice layer to the surface through convection. This causes disrupted surface features. There could also potentially be plumes venting material from Europa’s surface.
Hydrothermal Vents / Black Smokers
“Hydrothermal vents are fissures on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at mid-ocean ridges, ocean basins, and hotspots.” – Wikipedia
My mother in-law tells me about learning of these from a National Geographic magazine in the 1970’s; I am truly surprised at how few people I’ve asked have heard of black smokers – especially since they are hosts to diverse ecosystems of creatures that live in an environment that would be instantly lethal to most of Earth’s other creatures!
Extremophiles
“An extremophile is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e., environments with conditions approaching or stretching the limits of what known life can adapt to, such as extreme temperature, pressure, radiation, salinity, or pH level.” – Wikipedia
So the thinking is that if the same types of conditions where live exists on Earth also exist in an under-ice ocean on Europa (or several other icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn), than it’s possible there is life there too!
The Mission
The spacecraft will fly by of both Mars and then the Earth in a “gravity-assist” maneuver that will help it achieve the momentum necessary to reach Jupiter in April 2030. There it will use “gravity-assist” fly-bys of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede to reduce its momentum, and lower its orbit around Jupiter. The spacecraft will then perform 49 fly-bys of Europa, using its suite of instruments to scan the moon’s surface and deep into its ice sheets.
Follow Europa Clipper’s Journey on NASA’s Interactive Eyes on the Solar System
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