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ESA / NASA / Michael Carrol
The joint NASA-ESA Europa Jupiter System Mission would send to orbiters to explore the Jovian moons Europa and Ganymede. It is one of three missions vying to be the next big mission put on by the European Space Agency.
Scientists may finally get a chance to probe Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede for signs of microbial life, by looking in what are thought to be liquid oceans beneath their frozen crusts.
The Europa Jupiter Systems Mission is one of three finalists vying to carry out the European Space Agency's next big mission. All three presented mission plans Feb. 3 at a conference in Paris. A final decision is expected this June.
The other two missions vying for funding are the International X-ray Observatory, which could reveal what happens in the vicinity of black holes, and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, which will "listen" to gravitational waves, giving space-time a sort of soundtrack.
Jupiter moons
All three missions are international collaborations, so Europe's decision is tied to and will have consequences for the priorities of NASA, a partner on all three, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, a partner on IXO.
Under the joint NASA-ESA Europa Jupiter Systems Mission, NASA will target Europa, an ice-covered moon thought to harbor a liquid ocean beneath its crust; ESA will head to Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
Since the two orbiters are built by different agencies, one could fly without the other, though "you get better results in tandem," noted Michele Dougherty of University College London, who made the case for the joint mission at the Paris meeting, according to Space News.
Having two spacecraft, for example, would give scientists an opportunity to study Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetosphere in three dimensions.
International collaboration
IXO and LISA are considered too big and complicated to fly without international collaboration. Currently, IXO's lack of technical readiness has prompted the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to rank it a lower than LISA for U.S. space-science priorities.
Boosters of both missions say technical hurdles can be cleared and will be well worth the effort. IXO promises to provide the sharpest and most sensitive X-ray views of the Universe, according to team member Kirpal Nandra.
Bernard Schutz, a director at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, likened LISA's ability to "hear" gravitational waves, which are ripples of space-time, would be like adding sound to a silent film of a walk through a jungle. "There are bound to be many things we didn't even expect," he told Nature News.
Which mission is set as a priority in Europe will become clearer this June. NASA has thrown preliminary support behind all three, though guidelines to be laid out March 7 in the final version of the National Academy of Sciences ranking will set the space agency's agenda.
Keep in mind, all the missions are still way out on the horizon: The one ultimately selected wouldn't launch until around 2020.
For more about these missions, check out these stories:
- Bigger, better telescopes to follow Hubble
- NASA, Europe explore mission to outer planets
- Jupiter's moon ocean is rich in oxygen
- Orbiting stars circle each other in minutes
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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How exciting. I'm very interested in knowing if there is microbial life on Ganymede or elsewhere in our solar system.
I'm also very glad to see the Europeans and Japanese getting so involved. The more participants, the more projects get funded and the wider the base of knowledge for mankind.
Here is a more exciting though: What if its not microbial? Lets set the probabilities aside for a minute and think about that concept, what if there is complex life somewhere else in this solar system. Very exciting.
AND if there is some sort of crazy fish in them thar oceans under the ice what are the origins of that life? did those life forms and life on Earth develop from some common ancestor (panspermia)? Or did life pop up in both places without any link (independent biopoesis)?
I'm with you mob_barley. I want to see some of those crazy Europa fishes.
I dunno -- sounds like a fishing expedition to me.
me too, me too, me too, I wanna see some three-eyed alien fish! But I'm not going to let them into the country unless they have a green card. Alien fish would be very cool. Or mermen and merwomen!
But hey, microbial life would be interesting too.
hrln...hahahahaha...I wish I'd said that.
-- Freeman Dyson, 1997
I would bet there will be life found. It would be neat to see "fish," but I doubt they would have eyes. Not much light gets down below the ice way out there. A good comparison will be what we find when the Russians finish drilling into that lake in Antarctica. I know somebody will say, but we have fish that use bioluminescence here on earth and they need eyes to see that, but I doubt it would have evolved there before the eye. And since it would be exceedingly dark down there, the visible light eye probably doesn't exist in my opinion. Any complex fish would more likely see electric impulses from animals.
Guess we won't know till we go there and dig. Lets hope we spend the 53 billion on this project instead of on that high speed rail.
Probably a better bet than probing Uranus
I am convinced there must be at least microbial life in our solar system besides earth. I hope they find higher life forms too.
"All these worlds are yours except Europa"
Definitely, I would love to see the other two finalists on that list get funding as well, they all sound worthwhile to me!
Yes yes they are, but I would prefer the Jupiter mission, or the LISA mission. Yes being able to get good X-Ray readings would be awesome, but we could either discover life somewhere other than Earth, or listen to the gravitation "pulse" of the universe.
In a perfect world all of these programs would be well-funded. I'm a huge fan of searching for life off-Earth so I'm more in favor of prioritizing the missions to Europa and Ganymede. But I can understand why some would want to prioritize the IXO or LISA. I am very curious to know what other possible missions were looked at. These are only the 3 finalists. I will investigate.
LISA and IXO are more valuable from a science stand-point, as they're taking astrophysics into uncharted territories, which could open up whole new fields of studies. The Jupiter mission is a homerun publicly, as most laymen want to see space landers and potential aliens, like some movie.
I'm personally excited by all three proposals, it's too bad there isn't sufficient funding to do them all.
MikeyMike,
There would be plenty of funding to do all three missions if the U.S. were not flushing $3 billion down the toilet each year funding the Star Wars program - the biggest boondoggle ever.
Cygnus, I do not disagree that IXO and LISA are more important to astrophysics, but that does not lessen the importence of Europa in astrobiology. I mean if life, even simple single cell organisms, can be borne on an icy moon with virtually no real light(granted we don't really know how much light can penetrate the ice), but does have liquid water, and heat, regardles of core heat, or tidal heating, under what other conditions could life be feesible, and how many potential worlds that would otherwise be considered unihabitable may harbor life? Though ultimately I agree with Mob, it would be nice if all three could be funded.
I'd like them to figure out how to have a conference call. We also have this thing called the Internet. No need to send everyone overseas for a conference.
I have been really big into gravity waves for decades, and as such I have a keen eye on lisa, BUT...with the failure of ligo (to definitively detect G waves) and the complications of a trio of spacecrft, i see it as very risky, but it would be neat to get a better gravitational map period. It would be very worthwhile if we extrapolated it to our immediate surroundings. And I believe we will, in time. It is that important. And, like sharing maps of the ocean, intl cooperation will be expected. Still, I can't see an overall approval with such a high risk of failure (three MUST work and detection not assured)...okdokey...We reallly do need more xray maps...of everything, but as the article mentions, the ixo is a bit off track for now..the project planners are rushing to secure funding, any funding and this is most likely just one of many chances the project will have...I can see it slated for consideration at a later date, though I am not entirely convinced that it's data would have no relevance to the search for microbes on jovian moons, on the contrary, there may exist the possibility of direct inference from such measurements...more guessing games that is...bottom line, they may be too far behind to make projected deadlines (2020?)...that leaves the two spacecraft on a search for microbes...yea, I am biased, I think next to enceladous, Europa has a very good possibiliy of harboring life...though SF authors have suggested in the past that the upper atmosphere of jup could also be an "agar of life". Odd that the European ship would not visit Europa...but we will take the short straw with humble kudos..hehe..the whole thing seems kinda stacked though...2020 is a ways off. At this point we should already have instruments ON THE WAY!!...didn't this column just do an article on nano sattellites?...at the cost of college tuition nowadays, you'd think some major college could contract a saturn 5 and launch their own!!...or better yet take a clue from my previous posts and send a nano rocket/sat to the space station and from there set it on it's way to the one eyed giant in the sky!!...not so hard (compared to a x37b program), a single university could do it, if they really wanted to twist the professors union into not striking for even more absurd pay raises. OH well, It would be cool to hear the gravity waves, none of my experiments were for turning gravitational energy into audio...not even light...hmmm...besides, I am convinced ligo and lisa planners should at least think about the fact that gravity travels at v>c.(I know, so einstien was wrong, so what.) Till then it is a lot like trying to catch a nuetron with a toy u shaped magnet. If nuetrons only travel so far then decay, at some point from the sun, there oughta be a lot of x-rays from nuetrinos....If we can find seafood halfway to the ibex ribbon, manned exploration beyond the bounds of Sol stands a chance...even if we gotta put it there....lobster ala cart, bring your own biscuits.....I give our science planners an F+ for not being on this sooner, we need new leaders that don't make so much money they forget their purpose and I have an idea how to do that, pay them less, not more. Start making aspiration part of the selection process, degrees not required and blunders ARE accountable not deferrable.
Given numerous incidents on earth of nasty microbial things and non-native species of plants and animals being unintentionally brought to "new worlds" (where they adapted very nicely, thank you very much, I can just see where all this is going - every precaution taken, notwithstanding. "Sorry Commander Smith, I forgot to wipe my feet!".
The sterility practices at NASA are pretty rigorous, and even if there were accidentally some sort of "stowaways" what would they be able to infect? Possibly some microbial life forms on Europa? I doubt they would be compatible.
Now then, could we provide the spark that leads in a couple of billion years to something new evolving there? Hmm... possibly. Many people suggest that life here on Earth may have initially begun with "alien" microbes that survived a cometary impact after a long, long trip from way out there...
I wouldn't be worried about microbes from another planet infecting Earth like everyone thinks it would. Everything that see about such infections is based upon sci-fi.
In reality the microbials on each planet would have evolved within the environmental constraints of the planet and the available supply of food that the microbial would be able to injest to use as energy.
Most likely the microbial's would not survive on Earth for very long due to the variances in the atmospheric pressure, atmosphere and other environmental particular's not present on Earth but would be present on the microbials home planet.
A scary scenario would be when the first Earth like planet is found where both environment's are able to support species from either planet. The we can start thinking a War of the Worlds scenario.
Its unfortunate that it will take so long to get the mission ready, then the long wait for the spacecraft to reach its destination, but i guess all good things take time
Not necessarily Jonboy, Advances in technology increases almost every year. Nasa continues to develop new and faster engines which will reduce the time it take for a such a mission to be decreased by half.
I point you to VASIMR and the ION engine.
Keep up with the latest at Nasa and the other space agencies for the latest probe and satellite technology.
Hey, the bible never said that God didn't create life on other planets.. Its entirely plausible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth
will be a shame to find life in our solar system,billions of dollars just for a worm.
Better to prove that life exists in the form of a worm on another planet to sit around and play video games and isolate the planet from reality.
Even if only worms or microbials are found on another planet in the solar system the find will prove that life exists across the Universe and not just in microbial life form. The age of humans thinking that we are alone in the Universe and that the Earth is the center of creation is Medival era thinking which like that day and age is over with and will not return, regardless of how much you wish it to or how much you think it will.
Well it won't definitively prove that life exsists across the universe. It will help improve the probability that life does exsist elsewhere in the universe, give us additional conditions to take into consideration while searching for life elsewhere in the universe, but sadly it does not prove it.
life does exisit..but there needs to be the goldie locks zone also ..we are it ... we have a better chance of finding it on other solar systems with the same zones.
Not necessarily. We base that assumption by what we see on this planet. There are certain criteria that maybe required none-the-less for life to exsist anywhere, but outside of those possible criteria, it might not matter where the planet is at. Now whether or not complex life can develop outside of optimal conditions is another matter all together, and one that can be examined if a mission is sent to Europa, but to say that conditions for life have to conform to rigid standard could be a fallacy, and leave out potential areas where life could exsist. Look at Gilese(did I spell that right?) 581G.
I have been intrigued by Europa ever since I found out that its surface is water ice and that there are no craters. The absence of craters indicates the ice melts from time to time and also opens the possibility of huge oceans of liquid water under the ice. Newly discovered life forms in liquid water beneath the antarctic ice caps further enhances the possibility of life on Europa.
From space exploration to particle physics the United States has been eclipsed by Europe and the rest of the world. The good part is that we are as blissfully unaware of our decline as we were arrogant during it's development. So we shall painlessly fade from prominence only to awaken after the fact.
What can you expect after 60 years of watching television for an average of 6+ hours per day while the rest of the world was studying two languages and learning science and math that our students never got?
Spending hundreds of trillions of dollars on the military instead of investing in free college and a renovated primary school system also caught up with US.
It was cool while it lasted. What's a Ganymede anyway?
Thank you, Bob. As a longtime educator I know only too well of the truth you speak. Of course, sufficient tax money can always be found to pay a salary of $400,000 annually to a line coach at a public university...
have you guys been tested for THC..just a thought
how can there be water way out there ? its gotta be some type of freak space frost on that moon
Perhaps if you had listened in science class and paid attention over the years the the many sciences of how water is formed then perhaps you might have a clue to the reality of the Universe instead of sitting behind a screen hoping that eveything you thought was real would never be proven wrong. It pays to stay in school and not assume that what has been will always be which is never true.
I take it that you are also assuming that Nasa and the other scientists are also smoking dope? It helps to have an intelligence instead of notion of being correct.
Nope no dope in me. If any of us explained to how water could be there, would you believe us?
Well James,
Putting it in terms you might be able to comprehend, when God made the heavens and the earth maybe he decided to put some water out there too!
...and then, after 5 billion years he rested, and said, "it is good."
One place other than the two moons discussed in the article for life to possible exist would be Titan. I read an article in Discover magazine about a species of microbial called archaea. The archaea and the other species of the archaea create and thrive on methane gases of which species of clams and tube worms on the bottom of the ocean floors feed off of. The archaea cannot survive in an oxygenated atmosphere but readily survive in the methan enviroment under the sea floor.
If such a species of microbial life can survive in the limited extremes on Earth then theorectically the same species would be able to survive in an environment on Titan where the environment is the same as they environment in which they live in on Earth but on a planetary scale where the same methane that would kill humans would create an environment in which the archaea would have enough food to evolve into a new species of plant or another species like creature.
Biologically speaking, the archaea are the most primitive and earliest forms of life which still exist. That's why they are called "archaea". The prefix "archae" refers to things which are old as in archeology. All other more complex forms, including us, evolved from them.
I suspect we will find a variety of life on those moons – but whether or not we will be completely informed of what really will be discovered is another question. The irony is…there is already evidence of extraterrestrial life here on our own world. And there are interchanges already occurring between ETs and humans (CSETI.ORG). The question is..why aren’t these events officially sanctioned? They are not. World governments and the UN refuse to create an official committee to deal with this matter. Why is that? I guess it is because if it was officially announced that ETs exist, the stock market would fall, cats and dogs would rain from the skies, our bowels would no longer function, the Cubs would win the Series, ABBA would reunite – God knows we can’t have that happening. An opportunity for this sanctioning to occur did happen in the late 1950s, but President Eisenhower DROPPED THE BALL. But he did leave us with a wonderful warning when he said “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” OOPS. TOO LATE. This has already happened. There are cabals and entities that exist now that have more power than our own government and seemingly unlimited wealth.
"dwighthuth
If such a species of microbial life can survive in the limited extremes on Earth then theorectically the same species would be able to survive in an environment on Titan where the environment is the same as they environment in which they live in on Earth but on a planetary scale where the same methane that would kill humans would create an environment in which the archaea would have enough food to evolve into a new species of plant or another species like creature."
Nice thought..but think a little further,.. what do they eat... ahh yes..what trickels Down from above, a little like the "deep microbes extremophiles" in rocks in mines, what we seem not to understand..is that those microbes migrate deep..following food..that comes from above, So then lets take a step back.. if the enviroment above...cannot be a " provider of food" what happens to the chain?
See this
the "See this" above was a link to a Photo album, where I have this type of a chat ongoing for a number of years,,it is a Great way to keep public interest,,but it also is a good way to tri to keep this line of thought within the 10^50 for those that know what that is, and not the 10^29345 of the amino acids proteins reaction ;)
I am a representative of the Europan fish-people. Nothing to see here, move along. We don't need you messing up our world too.
Great Scott! We come in peace. We bring you signs of our superior technology, with which you too can fly through space. We like your moon world, although it is a little cold out here. How about if we set up some nuclear powered water heaters and get this place warmed up? It'll be a like a nice community pool. Plenty of room for everyone. Don't worry, you can trust us...
When are they going to probe Earth in search of intelligent life?
Since we ran out of countries to invade we are starting on other planets.....maybe they have oil we can steal..religion we can change..and innocent lives we can take ..
`
lol, it did not take long to change from a Science topic to a "comedians central" a great indicator of fear and dread, hence why most donot want to be involved in any deep thinking :))
I just want to know what they are using for bait?
Best bail is called " Greenbucks" ;)
" Great Gods, where am I? "