NASA takes first steps towards Europa mission for the mid-2020s

Well, the day has finally come. After all the talk of asteroid retrieval missions and other ideas for where they should focus their attention, NASA is finally taking a step towards a mission to Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa.

It's just a tentative step at the moment — a request for $15 million in the 2015 budget, to fund 'formulation studies' — but this is the very first time that NASA has mentioned Europa in their budget requests. $15 million won't actually get anything off the ground, of course. NASA's Curiosity rover cost $2.5 billion to put onto the surface of Mars. However, this is a start, and an important one

Why the interest in spending billions to fly to an icy moon? It's not for the ice. It's for what likely lies under that ice. Scientists have speculated for years that, due to tidal forces with Jupiter and the other moons that orbit it, Europa may be warm enough under all that ice to have a sub-surface ocean of liquid water. Further evidence of this came just last year when the Hubble Space Telescope spied what looked to be plumes of water vapour escaping from near Europa's south pole. We know that water was essential for life to form here on Earth, and given that scientists have found clay minerals on Europa's surface (maybe even deposited there from Earth!), it's possible that life may have formed Europa's dark, chilly oceans.

There's already been a few missions to Europa that NASA scientists have proposed in recent years.

One was a joint mission with the European Space Agency, called Europa Jupiter System Mission – Laplace (EJSM - Laplace), which would have sent orbiters to Europa and Jupiter's larger moon, Ganymede, to investigate the two and put landers on their surfaces. NASA pulled out of the proposed mission back in 2011, but the ESA is apparently continuing with its part of the plan, looking at a 2022 launch date. Here's a video about the original concept (and a bit about Europa, Ganymede and Callisto too):

Another proposed mission, this one solely run by NASA, is called Europa Clipper. This one apparently doesn't include plans to land anything on the surface, but it would buzz the moon repeatedly as it orbited Jupiter, and could fly through any water vapour plumes to study them closer.

[ More Geekquinox: 30-metre-wide asteroid to pass between Earth and the moon ]

The news wasn't all good from the 2015 NASA budget request, though. There are deep cuts planned for Earth-observation missions (crucial for monitoring our climate and environment), cuts to astrophysics and planetary sciences, and worrying cuts to their involvement in science education.

Given that NASA's budget accounts for less than half of a percent of the U.S. federal budget, these are very small amounts when compared to what's spent on things like the military. Since the American public gets roughly $10 back in their wallets for every $1 spent on space sciences, this kind of research should receive more attention and more money.

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