NASA Plans to Drill Into Europa's Crust In Search of Life
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Source: GIZMODO
Since early 2016, a NASA-employed Science Definition Team (SDT) of 21 researchers has been crafting a plan to send a robotic probe to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, located over 390,000 miles from Earth. On February 7th, that team delivered their first report to NASA, detailing their recommendations for that future mission, which will search for life by drilling toward the subterranean ocean scientists strongly suspect to exist beneath the icy moon’s surface. The team hopes to launch as soon as 2031.
This is not to be confused with NASA’s Europa flyby mission, which is slated to take place in the early 2020s. That said, the flyby mission will play a key role in the later lander mission, as it will use its cameras to scout out plumes or cracks where material from Europa’s subterranean might ooze out. The lander will later visit these locations in order to take samples. Understanding Europa’s surface and subsurface will help researchers plan for future lander missions to the moon.
Our first strong evidence for a subterranean ocean on Europa came from NASA’s Galileo mission, which explored Jupiter and its moons in the late 1990s. But samples have never been collected from the ocean itself, which is thought to be buried beneath 11 to 15 miles (19 to 27 kilometers) of ice. The ocean, comprised of liquid water and an unknown amount of salt, is an estimated 62 miles deep.
In this new report, the SDT worked with NASA engineers to design a probe that would be capable of drilling about four inches into Europa’s icy crust to collect samples that could be analyzed on the spacecraft for signs of life. If the lander is successful, a future mission to Europa could drill even further, maybe even reaching the subterranean ocean.
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Read more: http://gizmodo.com/nasa-plans-to-drill-toward-europas-ocean-in-search-of-l-1792233535
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's also somewhat larger than a robin's egg (for what that's worth)...
Waaaaaaay over 390K miles. 
TYPO!!
"..EXCEPT Europa. Attempt NO LANDING there."
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