NASA has announced the next new celestial body to be explored for the first time: Europa. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has more oceans than Earth - which makes alien life support a possibility.
That is, if President Barack Obama's proposed $4 trillion federal budget with $18.5 billion set aside for NASA smells right to Republicans in Congress.
Come sometime in the 2020s, the Europa Clipper is scheduled to orbit Jupiter during a three-year mission and pass the satellite Europa 45 times at varying altitudes.
"The mission would place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter in order to perform a detailed investigation of the giant planet's moon Europa - a world that shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust and which could host conditions favorable for life," wrote NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on its website. "The mission would send a highly capable, radiation-tolerant spacecraft into a long, looping orbit around Jupiter to perform repeated close flybys of Europa."
According to Tech Times, deep oceans with similar conditions as Earth's oceans exist on Europa, which makes the possibility of extremophile life very real. The icy moon holds four times the amount of water as our Blue Marble.
Jupiter could throw some serious radiation at the Europa Clipper, so the computers will have to be shielded, but astronomers have plans for the energy. The heat from the radiation could penetrate the ice on the moon, create food which would infiltrate the oceans and provide a starting point for an alien food chain, according to Tech Times.
"Looking to the future, we're planning a mission to explore Jupiter's fascinating moon Europa, selecting instruments this spring and moving toward the next phase of our work," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.
Galileo Galilei discovered Europa in 1610 with a simple telescope. Europa is about the size of our moon and the fourth-largest body orbiting Jupiter.
