{"id":33397,"date":"2024-10-14T01:13:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T06:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=33397"},"modified":"2024-10-31T22:35:51","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T03:35:51","slug":"nasa-set-to-launch-mission-to-a-moon-of-jupiter-to-find-out-whether-it-could-support-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=33397","title":{"rendered":"NASA set to launch mission to a moon of Jupiter to find out whether it could support life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For decades, an icy moon of Jupiter has been considered one of the most promising places to search for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. Thought to have an underground ocean and a potentially habitable environment, Europa<\/a> has long seemed a tantalizing target in our cosmic backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, humanity is poised to get a closer look at Jupiter\u2019s fourth-largest moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As early as midday Monday, NASA plans to launch a new robotic mission to Jupiter. Dubbed Europa Clipper, the probe is the largest spacecraft it has ever built for a planetary science mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming the launch does not face any further delays, Europa Clipper is scheduled to lift off at 12:06 p.m. ET Monday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The launch was originally scheduled for Thursday, but NASA was forced to stand down because of Hurricane Milton<\/a>, which made landfall late Wednesday along Florida\u2019s west coast, near Siesta Key. Kennedy Space Center was closed as the storm tore across the state, lashing much of the Florida Peninsula with powerful winds and heavy rain<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The delay was a minor setback in a mission that has taken more than a decade of planning and development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt feels surreal,\u201d said Jordan Evans, the mission\u2019s project manager at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. \u201cThere have been battles at every level, from early on with the initial concept for the mission, through getting approved, through each milestone and overcoming various problems along the way. To be at this point, watching the team get ready, is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europa Clipper is not embarking on a life-detection mission. Rather, it will study the composition of the ice-encased moon, along with its internal structure and geology. That information could help scientists confirm whether Europa has the right ingredients to support life<\/a> now \u2014 or whether it did at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are looking for a habitable environment,\u201d said Bonnie Buratti, the mission\u2019s deputy project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to look for the necessities for life, which are liquid water \u2014 and we\u2019re pretty sure that\u2019s there \u2014 the right chemistry and energy, whether from active geology or something else, that acts almost like a battery to push life along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buratti said there is strong scientific evidence that a vast ocean lurks beneath the moon\u2019s icy surface<\/a>. Europa\u2019s internal ocean, in fact, is estimated to have twice the volume of all of Earth\u2019s oceans combined, according to NASA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europa Clipper is scheduled to enter Jupiter’s orbit in 2030 after a six-year journey of 1.8 billion miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will give researchers new insights via 49 close flybys of the moon over four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll definitely get the thickness of the ice crust and whether there are little ponds in there,\u201d Buratti said. \u201cWith the ocean, I think we\u2019ll eventually understand how deep it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make those observations, the spacecraft will fly through harsh radiation environments generated by Jupiter\u2019s enormous magnetic field, which NASA says is around 20,000 times stronger than Earth\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we were to just go into orbit around Europa and study it, the radiation would likely kill off even the most radiation-hardened electronics within one to two months,\u201d Evans said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, mission managers developed a way for the probe to orbit Jupiter in harmony with the icy moon \u2014 a kind of cosmic duet that will help preserve its instruments from prolonged exposure to punishing radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, every six times that Europa goes around Jupiter, or every 21 days, we\u2019ll be in the exact spot in the universe to be right next to Europa,\u201d Evans said. \u201cAnd every flyby will be different, so we can get near global coverage of the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the team will need to exercise patience. Before it reaches Jupiter, the spacecraft will first pass Mars and then swing around Earth again, using both planets\u2019 gravity to slingshot it deeper into space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europa was discovered in 1610 by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. The icy body is the fourth-largest of Jupiter\u2019s 95 known moons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several space probes have made observations of Europa before \u2014 including NASA\u2019s Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Galileo missions \u2014 but this will be the first dedicated mission to the moon and NASA\u2019s first time studying an ocean world beyond Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That milestone has been a long time coming for Buratti, who wrote her thesis on Europa as a graduate student at Cornell University in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve only actually been on this mission for 2\u00bd years. I didn\u2019t start on it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019m just overjoyed to get to come back to something that is so near and dear to my heart. It really is a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades, an icy moon of Jupiter has been considered one of the most promising places to search for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. Thought to have an underground ocean and a potentially habitable environment, Europa has long seemed a tantalizing target in our cosmic backyard. Now, humanity is poised to get a closer look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5783],"tags":[30805,687],"class_list":["post-33397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-jupiter","tag-nasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33399,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33397\/revisions\/33399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}