For now we have found no traces of life outside our planet. But that doesn’t mean we give up. Indeed, NASA has just launched a mission directed towards the most likely candidate in the Solar System: Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter which according to many scientists could hide an ocean of liquid water under the eternal ice of the surface, and thus provide the environment perfect for life development. The only way to know, of course, is to check for yourself. And this is what Europa Clipper, the NASA probe launched last October 14th, which after a journey of almost three billion kilometers should enter the satellite’s orbit in April 2030, will do.
The probe
Europa Clipper is the largest space probe ever built by NASA. It is almost five meters high, weighs 6 tonnes and, with the solar panels from which it will be powered fully deployed, reaches a width of 30 metres. It carries with it nine scientific instruments, for a total weight of three and a half tons: traditional and infrared cameras, two infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, a mass spectrometer, radio antennas, radar. Everything needed to analyze the surface of Europa, study its thin atmosphere, the dust present in orbit, and plumb the depths hidden by its icy blanket.
Since this is a remote analysis (however close), Europa Clipper is not equipped to directly identify microbial life forms (no one expects to find large alien animals, but never say never), but rather to investigate the presence of the elements that we believe necessary for their formation: some heat source, such as underwater hydrothermal springs, salinity and pressure compatible with the life we know on earth, molecules such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, which represent the basic elements of organic life.
The mission
Once it arrives in Europa’s orbit, an appointment scheduled as we said for 2030, the NASA probe will begin its scientific operations. 49 flybys are planned which should lead the probe to fly over the entire surface of the satellite at no more than 25 kilometers in height. Success is not a given, because Jupiter’s orbit is clogged with its multiple satellites, which make the calculations so complex that the mission’s project manager, aerospace engineer Jordan Evans, has defined it as a “seven-body problem” ( citing the well-known three-body problem from which the TV series of the same name broadcast by Netflix takes its title).
At NASA, however, they are confident. And even if something goes wrong, there are other missions aimed at exploring Jupiter’s moons: ESA’s Juice probe, launched last year and headed towards Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, which it should reach in 2031, and a lander being studied by NASA, which could be launched on Europa to investigate the presence of microbial life forms directly from within its underground ocean.