Breaching Europas Subsurface Ocean

[jaboma]

europa is the prime candidate in our solar system to harbor some kind of life. most probably microbial but nonetheless very exciting stuff. what the hell is NASA doing.

apparently there is a europa Jupiter system mission but it just involves flybys and mapping the moons. why not go all out and breach europas surface.

check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryobot

now how amazing would it be to send this probe with cameras as it travels through europas ocean with us being able to watch a live feed of discovering potential life.

isnt this what NASA should be doing? or maybe i don't know how it all works. is it harder than it seems?

 

[Radrook]

europa is the prime candidate in our solar system to harbor some kind of life. most probably microbial but nonetheless very exciting stuff. what the hell is NASA doing.

apparently there is a europa Jupiter system mission but it just involves flybys and mapping the moons. why not go all out and breach europas surface.

check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryobot

now how amazing would it be to send this probe with cameras as it travels through europas ocean with us being able to watch a live feed of discovering potential life.

isnt this what NASA should be doing? or maybe i don't know how it all works. is it harder than it seems?

I once gave a speech about how Mars could eventually be Terra formed and the only reaction I got was "Who's going to finance that?" Money given to NASA is very little in comparison with what the military gets. That;why they have to go slow Moe fashion. If the government gave NASA more money then how will it wage its war in the Far East or keep its military edge with which intimidate and get its way? The only solution to this slow Moe modus operandi is when private enterprise gets heavily involved. Only then will we see a true effort at space exploration.

 

[qraal]

europa is the prime candidate in our solar system to harbor some kind of life. most probably microbial but nonetheless very exciting stuff. what the hell is NASA doing...snip... isn't this what NASA should be doing? or maybe i don't know how it all works. is it harder than it seems?

One problem with breaking in is contamination. Earth bugs are surprisingly resilient. Indirect detection will be better - at first - before going all out and trying to break ice. Maybe there is no ocean? We need to find out, preferably while learning more about the other moons and Jupiter too. JIMO would've been nice - if the Gov't had been serious about nuke-power in space.

 

[Kracatoan]

I think the greatest problem on Europa would be actually getting through the ice sheet at all - after all, it is 10km thick and the deepest mine on Earth is only ~4km deep.

And as graal said, contamination is an enormous risk, we wouldn;t want to go wiping out any life we find! Although tbh, I think Europan microbes would be much better adapted to living on Europa and so would easily out compete anything from Earth.

@Radrook, I thought Mars couldn't be terraformed because due to its low gravity, its escape velocity is less than the average velocity of an oxygen molecule, which would cause a lot of the atmosphere to leak into space.

 

[qraal]

@Radrook, I thought Mars couldn't be terraformed because due to its low gravity, its escape velocity is less than the average velocity of an oxygen molecule, which would cause a lot of the atmosphere to leak into space.

Not so. At Martian temperatures of about 200 K in its outer layers, the speed of oxygen is less than 500 m/s while the escape velocity is 4.5 km/s. Thus the atmosphere is stable against thermal escape. The solar wind can rip bits of the atmosphere away, but the rate of loss is very low. In the first aeon after the planets formed the solar wind and the sun's Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) levels were much, much higher and that's probably what eroded the original Martian atmosphere.