JUICE - Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer
Discussion
Tim330 said:
I saw that, looks interesting. I'd like someone to send a probe to drill into the ice on Europa and send down a mini submarine to look for signs of life. Not sure if that will happen anytime soon.
Me too but the ice on Europa is estimated to be 60 odd miles thick. That would have to be some gear to burrow through.I reckon the ice has the consistency of steel.
Drilling into planetary or moon surfaces has not gone well so far. Apollo astronauts had extreme difficulty just drilling a metre or so into the lunar surface.
The Mars Insight probe had a small drill which they hoped would go down a metre or so but it just couldn't penetrate more than a few centimetres. It kept deflecting off at an angle. In the end, they gave up.
Drilling down through the icy crust of Europa would take massive - and heavy - engineering, something that we are not capable of getting to our own moon, let alone a moon 500 million miles away.
Drilling into planetary or moon surfaces has not gone well so far. Apollo astronauts had extreme difficulty just drilling a metre or so into the lunar surface.
The Mars Insight probe had a small drill which they hoped would go down a metre or so but it just couldn't penetrate more than a few centimetres. It kept deflecting off at an angle. In the end, they gave up.
Drilling down through the icy crust of Europa would take massive - and heavy - engineering, something that we are not capable of getting to our own moon, let alone a moon 500 million miles away.
Pepperpots said:
Drilling 60 miles?
Got me thinking, why not melt your way through with something like the radioisotope thermoelectric generator ('big box of plutonium') like the one used in the film 'The Martian'.
That's where my mind went straight away...use an RTG. Got me thinking, why not melt your way through with something like the radioisotope thermoelectric generator ('big box of plutonium') like the one used in the film 'The Martian'.
I guess it depends whether it's mixed ice and rock.
Also the aliens living in the subterranean sea might see it as an attack
Eric Mc said:
Due to lift off today on an Ariane 5 from French Guyana on an eight year trip to Jupiter. Its priority is to study the moons Europa and Ganymede
And Callisto I believe.You wonder why they spent so much time looking for life on Mars when these moons seem more obvious places to find it. Proximity perhaps. IIRC Arthur C Clarke proposed life on Europa many decades ago.
Piece on this mission in the latest episode of BBC's The Sky at Night (approx 11:15 in).
Scott "Fly Safe" Manley also discusses it on his YouTube channel.
Scott "Fly Safe" Manley also discusses it on his YouTube channel.
Simpo Two said:
And Callisto I believe.
You wonder why they spent so much time looking for life on Mars when these moons seem more obvious places to find it. Proximity perhaps. IIRC Arthur C Clarke proposed life on Europa many decades ago.
I think it's a decent bet that microbial life will be found given the earth based extremophiles, which are reasonable analogues. You wonder why they spent so much time looking for life on Mars when these moons seem more obvious places to find it. Proximity perhaps. IIRC Arthur C Clarke proposed life on Europa many decades ago.
Simpo Two said:
And Callisto I believe.
You wonder why they spent so much time looking for life on Mars when these moons seem more obvious places to find it. Proximity perhaps. IIRC Arthur C Clarke proposed life on Europa many decades ago.
Decades since I read that short story, but I remember it didn't end well for the natives.You wonder why they spent so much time looking for life on Mars when these moons seem more obvious places to find it. Proximity perhaps. IIRC Arthur C Clarke proposed life on Europa many decades ago.
Simpo Two said:
Eric Mc said:
Due to lift off today on an Ariane 5 from French Guyana on an eight year trip to Jupiter. Its priority is to study the moons Europa and Ganymede
And Callisto I believe.You wonder why they spent so much time looking for life on Mars when these moons seem more obvious places to find it. Proximity perhaps. IIRC Arthur C Clarke proposed life on Europa many decades ago.
We did not have a clue about the nature of the Galilean moons before 1979.
TGCOTF-dewey said:
I think it's a decent bet that microbial life will be found given the earth based extremophiles, which are reasonable analogues.
Extremophiles on Earth evolved on a planet where life has existed for billions of years. So most likely emerged where conditions were more favorable, then evolved to survive in volcanoes etc.Life in the waters of Jupiter's moons would suggest life will always emerge where conditions are possible.
It might be that it only happen on 1 in a hundred planets were it's possible. Or 1 in 1000. Or a million.
There is no certainty at all that life has evolved on these EXTREMELY cold moons. And those oceans must have the drakest dark you can imagine - as no light gets down to those depths.
JUICE might give us a better idea as to what conditions might be like in their interiors so we have better data to go on. Also, we don't know if conditions on these moons were more benign earlier in their history. Again, JUICE migt give us some clues as to how these moons evolved over time.
JUICE might give us a better idea as to what conditions might be like in their interiors so we have better data to go on. Also, we don't know if conditions on these moons were more benign earlier in their history. Again, JUICE migt give us some clues as to how these moons evolved over time.
Eric Mc said:
There is no certainty at all that life has evolved on these EXTREMELY cold moons. And those oceans must have the drakest dark you can imagine - as no light gets down to those depths.
JUICE might give us a better idea as to what conditions might be like in their interiors so we have better data to go on. Also, we don't know if conditions on these moons were more benign earlier in their history. Again, JUICE migt give us some clues as to how these moons evolved over time.
No certainty at all, but black smokers have shown some extremophiles don’t require light, or food that originally depended on life. Perfectly possible that they are ‘warm’ below thick ice.JUICE might give us a better idea as to what conditions might be like in their interiors so we have better data to go on. Also, we don't know if conditions on these moons were more benign earlier in their history. Again, JUICE migt give us some clues as to how these moons evolved over time.
ChevronB19 said:
No certainty at all, but black smokers have shown some extremophiles don’t require light, or food that originally depended on life. Perfectly possible that they are ‘warm’ below thick ice.
What we do not have a single clue about is how earth based extremophiles evolved. The current assumption is that their ancestors evolved in much more benign environments, probably billions of years ago, and then adapted to be able to survive in these extreme environments over hundreds of millions of years.As I said above, we do not know at this time anything at all about what conditions were like in the early histories of the Galilean moons. If they have always been like they are today, then maybe extremophiles never evolved in the first place because they never had any ancestors. We just don't know.
Eric Mc said:
There is no certainty at all that life has evolved on these EXTREMELY cold moons. And those oceans must have the drakest dark you can imagine - as no light gets down to those depths.
JUICE might give us a better idea as to what conditions might be like in their interiors so we have better data to go on. Also, we don't know if conditions on these moons were more benign earlier in their history. Again, JUICE migt give us some clues as to how these moons evolved over time.
Are they that cold though?JUICE might give us a better idea as to what conditions might be like in their interiors so we have better data to go on. Also, we don't know if conditions on these moons were more benign earlier in their history. Again, JUICE migt give us some clues as to how these moons evolved over time.
Current thinking is quite a lot of geothermal energy due to gravitational effects on the iron cores.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/europas-interior-may...
Edited by TGCOTF-dewey on Thursday 13th April 13:34
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