Jupiter's Moon: Europa - One to watch:

Mark · 2003-12-27 08:28:26

This is definately a moon of interest. The Jovian system is a very beautiful and interesting one, in particular the moon Europa.

Apparently the planet is covered in a thick layer of ice, but it is believed that underneath is vast quantities of water. If there is unfrozen H20 under the ice, it must be warmed somehow and it is believed it could be warmed via the gravitational tug the moon experiences with Jupiter. This has got some believing that life could possibly exist in the water under layer of ice.

You can try www.space.com and search "Europa", and you'll find plenty of interesting articles about it.

Palomar · 2003-12-27 08:41:50

*Yep. Europa is of great interest to me.

Another thread regarding Europa can be referred to in the "Unmanned Probes" section of New Mars. So far it's garnered 57 replies in 4 pages of material.

I'm really looking forward to probe exploration of Europa.

--Cindy

Mark · 2003-12-27 20:29:16

Yeah, apparently they are sending something like the equivalent of the Cassini to do analysis of the entire Jovian system(much like what the Cassini will be doing with the Saturnian system). This is great stuff because we'll be learning about the two largest systems within our Solar System and the ones which have the moons of great interest to us. Apparently there are plans to send a Hydro-bot to Europa that will drill through the ice surface and go into the watery ocean below. Who knows, we might discover some sort of weird alien fish there or microbes!

Mad Grad Student · 2003-12-27 20:53:09

Design a Mission to Europa

You guys will get a kick out of this. I found a flash game at the JPL website that allows you to design a mission to Europa and look for life! In it you pick the number and type of instruments you want to send (Up to four) along with the probe, see if it survived liftoff and en route problems, and use the instruments to see if you can find life with them. Mine was highly succesful, proving in one week the existence of ET . Note, this is the high-speed version, dial-up users might want to use the other version.

The big problem I see with sending a cryo/hydrobot mssion is that you can't send 20 miles of control cable down through that ice pack and expect it to stay intact. You also face daunting problems with trying to comunicate with the hydrobot via remote control. 12 miles is a LONG way for even ELF radio waves to go through, I estimate that it would probably take hours just to e-mail one photo up to the mothership on the surface. Naturally, the hydrobot would be of limited means, it would have to be programed to first spend about four days collecting pictures and temperature/composition readings, then pick the 20 photos it found most intriguing and phone home.

Perhaps another option would be to design a more advanced form of microwave communication. I think that you could send data much faster through a microwave link, but this would require more power. Or perhaps I have no idea what I'm talking about and should shut up when it comes to this field. But humans are creative, someone (Perhaps me!) will think of something to fix all the little problems.

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#1 2003-12-27 08:28:26

Re: Jupiter's Moon: Europa - One to watch:

#2 2003-12-27 08:41:50

Re: Jupiter's Moon: Europa - One to watch:

#3 2003-12-27 20:29:16

Re: Jupiter's Moon: Europa - One to watch:

#4 2003-12-27 20:53:09

Re: Jupiter's Moon: Europa - One to watch:

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