Planning for a Mission to Europa

A new paper in Astrobiology shows how top planetary scientists associated with NASA are thinking about a mission to Europa. This moon of Jupiter harbors a vast ocean under its icy surface, where warming caused by Jupiter's tidal forces keeps water liquid. It would be awesome to drill all the way down to that ocean and see what's there. But with current technology that would require an enormous spacecraft with a full-sized drilling rig, so it isn't feasible. NASA's scientists are interested instead in the red streaks that mark Europa's surface, and which seem to be the result of water escaping from that deeply buried ocean and welling up to the surface; analysis from space suggests that the red color may come from organic molecules. So their idea is to land a rover on the surface and have it find some of that red matter and sample it.

The biggest potential hurdle is that those red areas seem to be very rough, much rougher than a Curiosity-style rover could handle. When the Juno probe reaches Jupiter in 2016, part of its mission will be to explore Europa's surface with high-resolution cameras and scout out possible landing sites.