A Ph.D. student at Cornell University named Joseph Shoer has designs on Europa, Jupiter’s ice-encased moon. At his Quantum Rocketry blog, he’s thought through all the requirements that a mission to explore the moon would need, complete with sketches of exactly what the robotic landers would look like.
A manned mission to Europa is somewhat impractical. For starters, it’d take about five years for a rocket to reach the moon, with the same amount of time being required for the return journey. Also, once the astronauts arrived, the radiation in the Jovian system would mean that any trips beyond a thick set of shielding would be somewhat on the toasty side.
But Europa, says Shoer, “ought to be one of the highest-priority exploration targets for robotic space probes”, mainly because it’s “one of perhaps two or three extraterrestrial places in the Solar System where we might hope to find life“.
“It’s a world whose orbital dynamics with Jupiter, its orbital resonances with the other Galilean moons, and its own rigid-body dynamics have a strong hand in creating its surface features,” he adds.
Astronomers believe, based on images from the Galileo mission and magnetometer readings, that Europa has an icy shell over a liquid ocean, with a solid rocky core at the centre. There’s some disagreement between scientists on how thick the ice is — estimates range from 10 to 100,000 metres — but observations have yielded reports of a number of “double-ridges” on the surface that are believed to be cracks in the crust.
These are thought that they’re caused by huge gravitational forces — the Jovian equivalent of tides on Earth, but amplified many times due to Jupiter’s considerably-greater mass. Once a crack forms, it gets squeezed back together and pulled apart again every time the moon rotates, which is approximately once every three and a half Earth days.
The cracks are the most likely place for life to take root. They get sunlight (unlike the rest of the ocean below the ice) and are also subjected to strong currents caused by the aforementioned squeezing and re-widening of the crack. These are likely to be the largest energy sources available to any life that exists on the planet.
Shoer’s plan to investigate these cracks is intricate but clever. A probe would enter orbit around the moon, scanning for these double-ridges. Once located, a lander would be despatched to the inside surface of the ridge, which would then monitor the crack, verify that it’s opening and closing, and work out the exact timing of the cycle.
Then, when the crack is closed, it would inflate cushions around itself and roll down the slope until it comes to rest at the bottom, centred over the crevasse. The cushions deflate, and tethers would be attached to either side of the walls, holding the probe in place. Then, once the crack opens again, a smaller vehicle could be dropped down inside to take measurements. Eventually, it’ll hit the ocean below, and could keep one part at the surface while another section dives as deeply as possible.
The difficulty, however, is in the timing. The probe will have less than a quarter of a day to operate before it gets squished by the crack closing again. Making sure that the orbiting satellite is overhead at the last possible moment to receive any recorded data is crucial.
