In a quiet corner of the Universe, tucked away on the edge of a Spiral Galaxies arm, is a Planet that teems with life and the inhabitants of that Planet are reaching out to try and find other life and the first stop is a moon orbiting a planet in their own Solar System.
Luckily, the Planet with life is our own and it is us doing the reaching out and where we are reaching out to is Europa which one of Jupiter's many moons and is soon to be the recipient of a robotic landing craft to drill into it in a search of life.
Europa is considered to be the best chance of finding life in our solar system due to what is believed to be a vast ocean hiding beneath its icy exterior and NASA have been assessing landing positions for the craft.
A NASA scientist said: 'Europa may hold the clues to one of NASA’s long standing goals, to determine whether or not we are alone in the universe. The highest-level science goal of the mission presented here is to search for evidence of life on Europa'.
With a launch date pencilled in of 2020, space exploration is back on the agenda and exciting missions like looking for ET in our own backyard are the sexy missions that capture the public's imagination alongside the more mundane but crucial ones which will result in us going where no man has gone before as Captain Kirk said.
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