Even though Jupiter was discovered by Galileo Galilei back in 1610, its moon Europa still remains a mystery.
Under its hard crust of ice, Europa is believed to have an ocean of liquid water that spreads up to 106 miles deep. Scientists believe tides, likely caused by Jupiter, could be warming Europa's ocean and providing energy that could be "driving an ecosystem of alien life" according to SPACE.com.
"(Europa) is one of the premier places to search for living life, that is, life that's alive today, life that we can poke and prod at and ask this fundamental question of what makes it tick," said Kevin Hand, the deputy chief scientist of solar system exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California according to SPACE.com. "Is its fundamental biochemistry the same as that on Earth or is it different? Is the origin of life easy or hard? There are all questions that Europa could potentially answer."
Europa is 1,940 miles in diameter and its surface temperature is minus 260 degrees F according to SPACE.com. The moon has a thin atmosphere composed of molecular oxygen and its gravity is 0.134 of Earth's.
Europa receives 5.4 Sieverts of radiations every day, which is a fatal dose compared to Earth. Someone at sea level on our planet receives 0.0014 Sievert per day.
"When we speak of the Europa mission at our shop we are talking about going for the gold ring: landing on the surface of Europa; sending a nuclear-powered cryobot carrier vehicle through the ice crust; discharging a nuclear-powered 'fast mover' autonomous underwater carrier vehicle that has planet-scale range, and selectively launching a series of miniaturized, highly intelligent AUVs to go into the more dangerous areas to search for and collect biological samples and bring them back to the mother ship," Stone Aerospace CEO Bill Stone said to SPACE.com.
Europa easily has more water than Earth does, and its water would form a sphere 1,090 miles in diameter. In comparison, Earth's water-sphere would be 860 miles across.
Europa's ocean is 10 times deeper than Earth's deepest ocean according to SPACE.com.
"There's a vast array of things you can learn from satellite observations of a planet," said Jeffrey Plaut, a NASA scientist at JPL, according to SPACE.com. "If you're talking about Europa specifically, the science objectives have been laid out pretty clearly over the years for various space-born observations of Europa. Some very fundamental things like: How thick is the ice shell? Where is the ocean?"
Despite no clear-cut evidence of life on Europa, some scientists believe that the water contains enough oxygen to support 3 million tons of fishlike species according to SPACE.com.
A robotic probe has been scheduled to visit Europa by the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) IN 2022.
To learn more about Europa, check out "Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets" or the recently released "Europa Report."
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