Science news this week: Europa, Mars and a Super-Moon!

When Voyager 2 flew past the Jovian moon Europa in 1979, Earthlings received images of a flat white surface, no craters, just mysterious brown streaks across the moon’s exterior.  The lack of features meant some force was present to erase the evidence of asteroid impacts.  I even remember reading news reports saying the closer Voyager 2 got to Europa, the younger the moon looked.  In fact, according to Popular Science, the discoveries prompted Arthur C. Clarke to write a sequel to his highly successful 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In his novel 2010, they beings warned the Earthlings, “all these words are yours – except Europa.  Attempt no landing here.”  Author Corey S. Powell reports that this warning has become a in-joke and a taunt to scientists.

Last week, NASA reported a huge global sub-surface ocean on the Saturnine moon Enceladus but this week they reported Europa as being the wettest known world in the solar system with more than twice the water on earth.  Life needs water.  Everywhere water exists on Earth so does life.  So to find alien life, one must look for alien water.  Europa has about 3 million cubic kilometers of it.

Life also needs good and energy, which Europa also contains.  Scientists suggest the oceans could be ‘nourished by a drizzle of organic chemicals’ stirred by volcanic vents.

Proving it will be a task worthy of Jupiter himself.  It’s about 600 million miles from here to Europa and that could take about 6 years.  The surface of the moon receives an average radiation dose of 500 rem/day, which can fry unshielded electronics in just a few days.  Lastly, the ice shell is about 10 miles thick, much more than the ice covering the Antarctica.  Many scientist are saying we should try, though.

The last probe to visit Jupiter and her moons was Galileo in 1995 and lasted until 2003 when the mission ended.  In May this year, NASA began developing a probe to visit Europa sometime in the 2020’s.

We might never find out what is below the surface of Europa unless we ignore the warnings of Arthur C. Clarke and put a lander on it.

 

In other news this week, it has been one year since NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) entered orbit above the Red Planet. Among its objectives, MAVEN will try to figure out where the water went.

 

 

Gases escaping from Mars:

And don’t miss the lunar eclipse with a Super-Moon, this Sunday, Sept 27.