On October 14th, NASA launched Europa Clipper, a space mission that will travel toward Jupiter’s moon Europa, also known as the “Ocean World.” The moon is considered to be the likely home to extraterrestrial life in our solar system.
Resting 628.3 million kilometers away from Earth, Europa is the sixth-largest moon in our Solar System, orbiting among 95 other moons the planet Jupiter. Slightly smaller than the moon, Europa is made up of silicate rock and an ice-covered surface.
It’s this icy surface, which potentially guards huge amounts of water, that has caught the attention of astronomers searching for life forms beyond our planet.
Data from NASA’s Galileo mission in the 1990s provided strong evidence that beneath the ice could hide salty oceans containing more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
Along with signs of energy sources, and the right chemical elements, these discoveries make Europa one of the best places in our solar system to search for extraterrestrial life.
“Europa Clipper will help us better understand whether there is the potential for life not just within our solar system, but among the billions of moons and planets beyond our Sun,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson after the spacecraft took off on Monday after nine years of preparation work.
While Europa seems promising for hosting alien life, the most likely life forms scientists might find are single-celled organisms or bacteria-like creatures.
Search for life in our own cosmic backyard
What makes Europa a go-to place for searching for extraterrestrial life? It’s the fact that it is just around the corner, in our “neigborhood.” One of the methods that scientists have been using to search for extraterrestrial life is scanning the cosmos for electromagnetic signals, potentially sent by smart life forms.
Another way of searching for life is by exploring the chemical compounds of exoplanets' atmospheres with ground-based and space-based telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
However, if we want to send a spacecraft to explore extraterrestrial life firsthand, it is impossible to reach exoplanets. With current spaceflight technology, reaching another star system would take thousands of years, so sticking to just our own solar system makes sense.
“If we’re to find extraterrestrial life, we must narrow our search,” writes NASA on its website. The astronomers in their search for aliens take Earth as a template and look out for planets with similar conditions, which Europa highly qualifies to host inhabitable environments.
NASA’s mission, which launched the Europa Clipper spacecraft just yesterday, aims to determine whether there are regions beneath Europa’s surface that could support life.
Carrying high-tech equipment to find aliens
The spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The spacecraft will be taking high-resolution images of Europa and creating detailed composition maps of its surface and atmosphere.
The spacecraft is also equipped with instruments to search for life. One of them is an ice-penetrating radar to detect subsurface water, along with gravity measurement tools to provide insights into Europa's ocean and deep interior.
The spaceship is also carrying a thermal instrument to identify areas of warmer ice and potentially recent water eruptions, as well as instruments to analyze the composition of tiny particles in Europa's atmosphere and surrounding space environment.
Europa Clipper is expected to reach Europa in April 2030, and it is carrying 2,750 kg of propellant to get it to Jupiter. Once it’s there, the spacecraft will fly past it 49 times, conducting research.
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