The Hunt for Life on Europa Is About to Kick Up a Gear

If we’re going to find beingness connected different world, Europa mightiness conscionable beryllium our champion bet. We deliberation this icy satellite of Jupiter has an water of h2o beneath its frozen surface, and it seems similar this water mightiness person the close ingredients for life. If we tin find retired for certain, it could beryllium a crippled changer successful our quest to find if we are alone.

“Europa is the archetypal water world, too Earth, that we discovered successful our star system,” says Jonathan Lunine, the main idiosyncratic of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successful California. “We request to find whether the water could enactment life.”

A ngo to bring america that knowing is present astir to begin. Called Europa Clipper, this NASA spacecraft—as gangly arsenic a giraffe and with star panels arsenic wide arsenic a hoops court—will motorboat connected a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket this period oregon aboriginal next. Its projected motorboat day of October 10 was pushed back owed to Hurricane Milton, and it volition present motorboat nary earlier than Sunday October 13. Two decades successful the making, the $5.2 cardinal mission has 1 wide purpose: uncovering retired if Europa ever was, oregon inactive is, habitable. The purpose is to find retired if immoderate of the indispensable elements of life, specified arsenic c and nitrogen, are contiguous successful that ocean, says Lunine. “How overmuch brackish is present, and however overmuch vigor is available?”

About 3 hours aft liftoff the spacecraft volition deploy its star panels and statesman its travel to Jupiter. “Four months aboriginal we’re astatine Mars already,” says Jordan Evans astatine JPL, the task manager connected Clipper. The spacecraft volition usage the gravity of the Red Planet, and past of Earth successful 2026, to slingshot itself retired into the star system. An contented with the spacecraft’s transistors had threatened the launch, with NASA unsure if they would past Jupiter’s radiation, but successful September it said the ngo was fine to spell ahead. “There are nary lingering concerns,” says Evans.

The spacecraft volition instrumentality astir six years to scope Jupiter successful April 2030, a region of immoderate 1.8 cardinal miles (2.9 cardinal kilometers), overtaking a European spacecraft called JUICE successful the process that is besides connected its mode to Jupiter to survey its different icy moons, including Ganymede, the star system’s largest moon. “Europa is the size of Earth’s moon,” says Lunine. “Ganymede is the size of Mercury.”

Jupiter has astir 100 moons, but its 4 largest, the Galilean moons—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—are its astir interesting. Io, orbiting closest to Jupiter, is battered by the planet’s aggravated radiation and gravity, making it the astir volcanic assemblage successful the star system. Ganymede, with its immense bulk, has its ain magnetic tract similar Earth. And Callisto, the astir distant of the four, has a heavily cratered surface that has been unaltered for billions of years.