In a few hours we will have the important announcement by NASA. Did you know there is a movie based on the Europa. It's called Europa Report. I just watched it now to get in the mood of the announcement.. the following is one half of the synopsis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Report
"Dr. Unger (
Embeth Davidtz), CEO of Europa Ventures, narrates the story of the Europa One mission. Six astronauts embark on a privately funded mission to
Europa, a
moon of
Jupiter, to find potential sources of life.
[4] The crew members are Captain William Xu (
Daniel Wu), pilot Rosa Dasque (
Anamaria Marinca), chief science officer Daniel Luxembourg (
Christian Camargo), marine biology science officer Katya Petrovna (
Karolina Wydra), junior engineer James Corrigan (
Sharlto Copley), and chief engineer Andrei Blok (
Michael Nyqvist).
At twenty months, the ship lands safely on Europa, but misses its original target zone. The crew drills through the ice and releases a probe into the underlying sea. Blok, who is sleep-deprived and eliciting concern in the rest of the crew, sees a light outside the ship. However, he is unable to record it or otherwise convince the crew of its occurrence. The probe is struck by an unknown lighted object, and contact with it is lost.
Petrovna insists on collecting samples on Europa's surface. After a crew vote, she embarks on a walk outside. Analyzing the samples, Luxembourg discovers traces of a
single-celled organism. Petrovna sees a blue light in the distance and decides to investigate it. As she approaches the light, the ice below her breaks and she falls through. Her head-mounted camera continues to broadcast, displaying her terrified face as the blue
bioluminescence is reflected in her eyes, before cutting out.
The crew agrees to leave in order to bring their discovery back to Earth, but the engines malfunction. As the ship hurtles back to Europa's surface, Xu unbuckles from his seat to remove water shielding to reduce the impact speed. Remarkably, the ship crashes at the originally-targeted landing site. On impact, Xu is killed, and the ship is damaged, leaking oxygen and losing heat. It begins to sink into the ice.
Blok and Luxembourg suit up to make repairs outside the ship. Luxembourg tries to descend, but falls through the ice. Blok knows that there is no chance that he alone will be able to repair the ship before it sinks. Instead, he manages to fix the communication system, at the expense of turning off the life support systems, just before the same blue light Petrovna saw approaches and he appears to fall through the ice as well."
Just see the movie for the continuation to avoid spoilers or read the web if you don't intend to watch the movie.. or wait for NASA announcement before getting excited. The movie can make you be familiar with Europa and sending manned probes to it.
