Conor Feehly is a New Zealand-based science writer. He has earned a master's in science communication from the University of Otago, Dunedin. His writing has appeared in Cosmos Magazine, Discover Magazine and ScienceAlert.
In October this year, NASA and the European Space Agency will launch one of the most sophisticated spacecraft ever assembled. Its destination? Europa, Jupiter's fourth largest moon. , which aims to reach Europa by 2030, is stacked with a number of instruments that can help scientists understand the moon's complex geology and composition — ultimately,. In other words, they want to learn whether this moon has favorable conditions for life to exist .
Scientists have designed the Europa Clipper mission to conduct multiple flybys of Europa in order to sample different aspects of the moon's magnetic response. On one hand, researchers will try to figure out the response's strength, and on the other, they'll attempt to measure the timing of the response relative to Jupiter's magnetic field."Through this, we hope to work out the salinity of the ocean," said Vance.
The interaction of water and rock deep within Europa may also release hydrogen and other chemicals into the ocean. And, because Europa is constantly flexing due to massive tidal forces as it orbits Jupiter, the interior of the moon is likely warm. That means hydrothermal vents may be supplying the ocean floor with chemical nutrients, similar to the way vent systems found on Earth's ocean floor work.
The Europa Clipper possesses a range of instruments which will gather materials ejected from icy geysers on the moon, and those materials could provide astrobiologists with credible evidence that living processes are indeed occurring beneath the surface. "There's been lots of work done to understand what kind of chemical biosignatures exist and how to detect them … we kind of think of life as a binary thing, but detecting life is not necessarily binary, or easy, at all," Elizabeth"Zibi" Turtle from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory said at the conference. Turtle leads the
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