Things are looking very good for a NASA mission to Jupiter's very enigmatic icy moon Europa.
IO9 reports that NASA announced:
- $15 million will be allocated for "pre-formulation" work on a mission to Europa, with plans to make detailed observations from orbit and possibly sample its interior oceans with a robotic probe.
- (Europa has a) massive subsurface ocean contains almost twice as much water as found on Earth. The water is kept in liquid state owing to the gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter and the moon's turbulent global ocean currents.
2 comments:
Wow! Arthur C. Clark must be sitting up in his grave. I can't wait to see how this mission pans out!
That is the very same thing that came to mind here. The minute the probe lands NASA's radio scopes all get the "all the rest is yours'" What a rush! Still, I wonder if Europa would get singed if Jupiter goes onto what....? If Jupiter starts fusing h2, it still wouldn't be on anything close to main sequence as I think it works....
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