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Jupiter's Heroic Journeys

Decent Essays

For our next Flagship mission to space, I believe it should be different from the rest of our intergalactic journeys. We have sent rovers and satellites to Mars, satellites to other planets, but we really haven’t gone to far from the norm in today’s space journeys. If we really want to find life on other bodies in our solar system, we have to explore our options. We could explore Jupiter, Venus, Encleadus, or even some of Jupiter’s moons. But what are the main characteristics that are need to sustain life? Water is the most important in my opinion along with the opinion of many other scientists. So what bodies do we know that have the best probability of having water on them? Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons we believe has some sort of ocean …show more content…

We know the crust is solid and most likely water ice due to observations from the probes that have flown by the moon so we know the lander would be able to land and conduct experiments. One of the biggest reasons in which I would send a lander over a human would mainly be because of the cost and the complications. The temperatures alone range from 50-140 Kelvin according to NASA, which is not nearly suitable for humans. Landers are much cheaper than human exploration in the context and generally they are a one-way trip that can experiment longer. Also, Europa has an intense amount of radiation received per day compared to Earth, which would mean that the astronauts would need much better shielding. The extreme conditions and risks associated with deep space travel are beyond what we can handle at this point. We still haven’t even sent a human to Mars, which is .5 AU away let alone sending a human to Europa, which is approximately 4.2 AU away from Earth. We have never sent a human that far out in space due to the unknowns, cost factor, and physical and health concerns. It would be much simpler to send a Lander to Europa for preliminary research to see if it would even be worth sending human explorers …show more content…

One would be to confirm what is under the crust, whether it be water ice or an under the crust ocean containing more than 2x water than there is on Earth according to NASA. If we conclude that there is actually water, then we can either send more instruments or humans to Europa to find out if there is life in the water beneath the crust. This may be a hard task to achieve since the water ice crust is estimated to be 5-20 miles thick according to NASA, which would be problematic, but if we could find a way to figure out if there is water, it could be the greatest discovery in space. Scientists believe that due to tidal heating, it would allow for liquid water to be stable underneath the crust. Tidal heating is when a moon orbiting a planet in an elliptical pattern is compressed and elongated resulting in flexing; this flexing of the orbiting moon produces higher temperatures, which is believed to stabilize the acclaimed ocean beneath Europa’s crust according to NASA. Also, if we found there to be water beneath the water ice crust on Europa, there may be under water processes that are capable of sustaining life like there is on Earth. On Earth, we have deep-water hydrothermal vents called black smokers that produce nutrients to bacteria that sustain life for tubeworms and giant clams and such. It is possible that if Europa contains water that there may be a similar form of chemosynthesis that would sustain alien life forms. To recap

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