According to France24 on October 14, NASA will launch a mission to explore Jupiter's moon Europa, one of the most promising locations in the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life. Scientists say this mission will help determine whether Europa has the necessary elements to support life.
NASA's Europa Clipper probe began its year-and-a-half journey to the moon Europa on October 21. It is the first step in learning about the possibility of life on another planet in our solar system.
The mission will not look for life directly, but instead will answer the question: Does Europa have the necessary elements for life to exist? If the answer is yes, another mission may be planned to investigate further.
First discovered in 1610, Europa has fascinated scientists for decades. The first close-up images of Europa were taken in 1979 by the Voyager probe, revealing the moon’s icy surface crisscrossed by mysterious red streaks. Then, NASA’s Galileo probe in the 1990s provided evidence that Europa may have an ocean beneath its thick layer of ice.
The mission’s goal is to search for the three essential ingredients for life: water, energy, and specific chemical compounds. If these elements exist on Europa, scientists think there could be life in the form of primitive bacteria in the deep ocean beneath the ice. However, this bacteria may be too deep for Europa Clipper to see.
Europa Clipper will travel nearly 2.9 billion kilometers on its journey to Jupiter and is expected to arrive in April 2030. After arriving, the primary mission will last for another four years, during which the spacecraft will make 49 close flybys of Europa's surface, with the closest approach being just 25 kilometers.
One of the biggest challenges of the mission is that Europa Clipper will have to endure extremely high levels of radiation, equivalent to millions of X-rays per flyby.
If Europa can indeed support life, it would open up a new horizon for the search for life in other solar systems. NASA scientist Curt Niebur stressed that, even if life is not detected directly, finding the elements necessary for life to exist would create a “whole new paradigm” for the search for extraterrestrial life.
