Monday 8 April 2024

Put The Kettle On, Be There Soon Europa

Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's Enceladus are the two most likely places where we would find life in our Solar System as both are thought to contain liquid water beneath their ice sheets , have a stable orbit and geothermal activity but we will never know if life exists on either of them unless we  throw a few missions their way, so that's exactly what scientists are doing with Europa the first of the Moons to be the recipient of spacecraft from Earth.
Europa is approximately 90% the size of our Moon and Nasa believe that there could be a liquid saltwater ocean containing twice as much water as Earth’s oceans and in October, Nasa’s Europa Clipper  will be making the 6 year, 484 million mile trip with the tools to not only detect it but see if there is any alien life swimming around in it or at least the ingredients of the building blocks for life.
As Europa launches huge plumes of 'water' off it's surface, the plan is fly Europa Clipper through one of these and analyse its composition, looking for bacterial cell material which would indicate life is, or was, present and lead to some further investigation and one of the greatest scientific discoveries.
Exciting stuff although by the time Europa Clipper gets there in 2030, by then we may have people living in a Moon outpost because after a far too long lull, Space Exploration is getting interesting again.

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