What's up @ Europa?

[Dr Mordrid]

NASA's having a big presser today about Europa. Webcast starts @1 PM EST.

NASA Hosting Science Update about Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa

NASA will host a Science Update at 1 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 16, to discuss new theories concerning Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The event will be in NASA's James E. Webb Auditorium at 300 E St. SW in Washington.

NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the event live. Reporters may attend the event or ask questions from participating NASA centers or by phone. For dial-in information, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at:

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov with their name, media affiliation and telephone number by noon Wednesday.

Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle and an ocean of salty water beneath its frozen surface.

Briefing participants are:

- Britney Schmidt, postdoctoral fellow, Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin

- Tori Hoehler, astrobiologist and senior research scientist, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

- Louise Prockter, planetary scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

- Tom Wagner, program scientist, cryospheric sciences, Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters

For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

[Evildead666]

Vast seas of Liquid Methane or something ?

Talk about "Getting to the outer solar system" when you have a planet that you can source one of your main fuels from.

Just have to find a planet with lots of Liquid Oxygen and we are made

[Dr Mordrid]

May not need the O2 - some exobiologists have come up with a possible liquid methane biology (as opposed to water.) They propose to equip the Titan Mare Explorer mission, which would would splash down in a methane lake and explore for up to 14 years, with additional sensors geared to find evidence. The proposal is for TME to fly in 2023.

[Evildead666]

I meant it as a "filling station" where you get to fill up on Methane, but you still need oxygen to burn the fuel, unless there is an alternative, like CO or CO2 from one of the other local planets atmospheres (if there is any).

[Dr Mordrid]

Too big a gravity well plus the oxidizer problem. Probably easier to hit up a water ice body like Ceres, Europa or Enceladus and use it to get both H2 and O2. One stop shopping.

[Evildead666]

Thats a point, forgot about the ice. Getting O2 from ice will also get you H2, so no point in going after methane.
Any people on board would probably produce enough of it anyway

[Dr Mordrid]

Europa is now officially a primary target for probes in the next decade.

Thera Macula image attached.

Link....

Huge Lake Could Increase Chance of Life on Jupiter Moon

The icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa may contain a body of water the size of the Great Lakes sitting just 1.8 miles below the surface. If confirmed, the findings could heat up the prospects of finding alien life on the chilly moon.

Deep underneath its frozen exterior, Europa is known to house a vast ocean, with two to three times the volume of Earth’s oceans. And researchers have previously speculated that small amounts of water might exist near the moon’s surface in pores or cracks.

“Now we’ve found evidence that there are giant liquid lakes perched inside the ice shell,” said planetary scientist Britney Schmidt from the University of Texas at Austin and lead author on the paper, which appears in Nature on Nov. 17.

Looking at data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft — which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 — Schmidt and her team identified a region called Thera Macula that sits 1,300 feet lower than the surrounding surface.

A hypothetical visitor to Europa standing on the edge of Thera Macula would look down at a choppy, brownish field of ice full of knobs and spires, and see tall icebergs trapped here and there. Extrapolating from analogous situations occurring in Greenland or Antarctic ice, the researchers developed a model to account for the chaotic frozen terrain.

Plumes of water heated from below would form salty brine that could gather into a lens-shaped subsurface lake. This would cause fractures in the brittle exterior, collapsing the surface ice and bringing it down to mix with the water below. “This would be evidence that there is water below you,” said Schmidt.

Sulfates from Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io as well as other chemicals such as oxygen and hydrogen peroxide are present on the Europan surface. These would get stirred into the salty lake sitting beneath Europa’s shell.

“This creates a potential source of energy for life to tap,” said geophysicist Don Blankenship, also of the University of Texas and another author of the recent paper. Such findings are exciting to astrobiologists and others searching for life in the solar system beyond Earth.

“I definitely think it’s plausible,” said planetary scientist Kevin Hand of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was not involved in the study. The best thing to increase confidence in the model would be further data, he added.

Unfortunately, NASA does not currently have missions to explore Europa on its schedule. The Juno spacecraft, which should arrive at Jupiter in 2016, will mostly study the gas giant’s composition and magnetic field, not focusing on the planet’s moons. A proposed Jupiter-Europa Orbiter has an estimated price tag of $4.6 billion, making it unlikely to launch during a time of budget squeezes.