A single grain of ice ejected from Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa, if captured by NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft, could be enough to reveal evidence of alien life, a new experiment suggests.”With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to find life, or traces of it, on icy moons,” said Frank Postberg of Freie Universität Berlin in a statement. Postberg is a co-author of a new study describing the findings.The first dedicated mission to this frozen Jovian moon, Europa Clipper is currently scheduled to blast-off in October 2024. It’s expected to arrive in 2030, then perform nearly 50 close fly-bys of Europa, skimming the icy surface at altitudes as low as 25 kilometers (16 miles). The mission’s primary objective is to learn more about the habitability of Europa’s subterranean ocean and the thickness of the ice shell above it. The mission is not designed to find life, to be clear — but scientists are now realizing there may be a way.Related: The Weird Plumes of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Are Spewing Water VaporOne of Europa’s fellow ocean moons is Enceladus, a small, icy body in orbit around the ringed planet Saturn. In 2006, the Cassini mission to Saturn discovered plumes of water vapor belching out from Enceladus’ ocean through large fractures in the surface, nicknamed “tiger stripes.”In 2014, the Hubble Space Telescope observed what appeared to be a similar looking plume towering 200 kilometers (125 miles) above Europa’s surface. Two years later, it saw another plume emanating from the same location. Then, in 2018, NASA astronomers revealed that the old Galileo probe,which operated in orbit around Jupiter between 1995 and 2003, had actually flown through a plume.Under the assumption that Europa Clipper may …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnA single grain of ice ejected from Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa, if captured by NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft, could be enough to reveal evidence of alien life, a new experiment suggests.”With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to find life, or traces of it, on icy moons,” said Frank Postberg of Freie Universität Berlin in a statement. Postberg is a co-author of a new study describing the findings.The first dedicated mission to this frozen Jovian moon, Europa Clipper is currently scheduled to blast-off in October 2024. It’s expected to arrive in 2030, then perform nearly 50 close fly-bys of Europa, skimming the icy surface at altitudes as low as 25 kilometers (16 miles). The mission’s primary objective is to learn more about the habitability of Europa’s subterranean ocean and the thickness of the ice shell above it. The mission is not designed to find life, to be clear — but scientists are now realizing there may be a way.Related: The Weird Plumes of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Are Spewing Water VaporOne of Europa’s fellow ocean moons is Enceladus, a small, icy body in orbit around the ringed planet Saturn. In 2006, the Cassini mission to Saturn discovered plumes of water vapor belching out from Enceladus’ ocean through large fractures in the surface, nicknamed “tiger stripes.”In 2014, the Hubble Space Telescope observed what appeared to be a similar looking plume towering 200 kilometers (125 miles) above Europa’s surface. Two years later, it saw another plume emanating from the same location. Then, in 2018, NASA astronomers revealed that the old Galileo probe,which operated in orbit around Jupiter between 1995 and 2003, had actually flown through a plume.Under the assumption that Europa Clipper may …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
