NASA Eyes Jupiter Moon for Next Rover Mission

Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:34 am » by **WillEase666**

Published on Feb 18, 2013

A mission to land a space craft on Jupiter's moon Europa could be launched by 2021.

Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:40 am » by **Master Otomon**

Funny how last week they said they would put Europa in the Euro bills eh?

When you translate Europa from greek to english it reads something like "Wide Eyes"

Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:56 am » by **I2haveseen**

Typical. OPld news filnaly goes main stream. How long have we (man) know this? Shouldn't complain. least it' is in the main stream. Panspermuia is prob. true IMO. For me it's not is they find life. But more: whats the genesis? Is it the same? I hope not (the implications are more eye opening :flop:

)

for posting.

Tue Feb 19, 2013 7:03 am » by **Seahawk**

So are they now competing with the ESA's JUICE mission with this?

They should have launched this three years ago in 2010, on the 400th anniversary of Europa's discovery.

The ESA mission, JUICE (Jupiter's Icy Moon Explorer) has a lot of the same ambitions that the mission NASA now seems to be planning, but, apparently, the ESA has their funding now. Guess we'll see.

We can speculate on the existence of life on Europa, but we really don't know anything yet about the chemistry of the subsurface ocean.

The speculations about life there are pretty controversial. There are some who hypothesize that the surface radiation could be creating free oxygen, which seeps into the ocean, and that along with the heat from the tidal interaction from Jupiter, may have created complex life- with the respiration of oxygen, and the presence of other compounds. That's exciting, but we'll have to wait and see.

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There's also the Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM) that's on the books. This is supposed to be a joint effort by NASA and the ESA, so I wonder why don't just make the Jupiter mission a joint project, as well. :headscratch:

The plan for the joint effort was to to study Titan, Enceladus- in Saturn's E-ring, and the other Saturn moons. That would be awesome.

The ESA put that mission on the shelf, so that they could use their funding on the Jupiter mission first.

Lol. Sounds like two little kids dropping the toys they're playing with to race to the toy that they both suddenly see each other eyeing.

Also, the New Horizon probe should be reaching Pluto next year. That's pretty cool, too.