Space & Cosmos

Scientists have long urged NASA to search for signs of life near Jupiter. it’s happening now

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

In 2015, Bill Nye was aboard Marine One with President Obama.

The television personality and science advocate was officially attending the Earth Day event, but he talked about space exploration, especially the much-needed NASA jet at La Cañada Flintridge. He took the opportunity to speak with the president about the mission, which is still in its early stages, at the Institute for Advancement Research. funds.

After a decade of advocacy by scientists, the mission is scheduled to launch as early as Friday to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which is suspected to have a vast ocean capable of supporting life.

“There are two questions: Where did we come from? And are we alone in the universe?” Nye said. “If you meet someone who never asks you such questions, they are not being honest with you.”

The $5 billion European Clipper spacecraft, designed by JPL, is the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built by the space agency. The spacecraft will be launched on a SpaceX rocket built in Hawthorne.

“If we discover life on other worlds, life in this world will change,” Nye said. “The people who live and work in Los Angeles County are doing this work that could change the course of human history.”

Following the James Webb Space Telescope and Perseverance Mars rover, Clipper is the last multibillion-dollar project completed this decade as NASA faces budget constraints and project management issues. This is one of our flagship projects.

“I often speak of these missions as modern-day cathedrals. They are generational quests,” NASA JPL Director Laurie Lesin said at a press conference for the Clipper launch. “I am truly proud that, as a human race, we have chosen to take on these difficult, long-term goals, such as exploring the unknown on Jupiter.”

NASA has until November 6 to launch the spacecraft, and is currently waiting for Hurricane Milton to pass over Florida’s Space Coast.

When the spacecraft leaves the Cape Canaveral launch pad, it will begin a five-and-a-half year journey. It will first slingshot around Mars in early 2025, then boomerang back around Earth in late 2026, before accelerating toward the solar system’s largest planet. An incredibly dynamic month.

Europa orbits Jupiter in just three and a half days, moving 10 times faster than the Moon. The strong gravitational force from the gas giant constantly crushes and distorts the moon’s core, heating it.

Scientists believe that hydrothermal vents blow the core’s heat upwards, creating vast oceans about 15 miles below the moon’s icy crust (far deeper than humans have ever dug on Earth). I think that it is melting.

Observations from Earth and orbiters suggest that some of this water works through cracks in the ice and erupts in geysers more than 100 miles high.

Europa, with its energy sources in the form of liquid water and heat, has fascinated scientists for decades. If organic compounds such as amino acids that form the proteins that make up cells also exist, Europe could be home to extraterrestrial life.

Clipper will search for light signatures of these compounds on Europa, as well as for compounds that could be blown into space by meteorites or geysers.

“If there was anything alive, imagine European microorganisms, not to mention European fish, they would be launched into space,” Nye said. “If you sample pond water anywhere on the planet, anywhere that’s humid, you’ll find all the little viruses and bacteria and microorganisms. So it stands to reason that at least you’ll find organic compounds.”

(NASA is almost certain it won’t discover fishmen, but that hasn’t stopped scientists from dreaming.)

Previous explorations of Jupiter have given scientists rough sketches of the moon, but Clipper will help paint a detailed portrait.

Once Clipper arrives at Jupiter, it will orbit the gas giant 80 times over the next four years, making 49 flybys of Europe at a distance of about 26 miles from the surface, collecting data from pole to pole.

After the first few flights, scientists should be able to confirm the existence of oceans. It’s all done by reading the magnetic field produced by the moon and measuring gravity by measuring how much the moon pulls on the spacecraft.

It will also provide the highest-resolution images of the moon ever taken and the first reading of which molecules are near the surface.

Throughout the remainder of its mission, Clipper will study the complex dynamics of how the ocean interacts with the icy crust and heated mantle below. This will gradually become clearer as the probe uses penetrating radio waves, similar to an X-ray machine, to peer beneath the icy crust.

“Clipper will be the first detailed mission that will allow us to characterize the habitability of the most common inhabited world in our universe,” said Gina Dee, acting director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. Braccio said. Press conference.

On September 3, 2034, Europa Clipper will intentionally collide with Jupiter’s rocky moon Ganymede to prevent the spacecraft from accidentally colliding with one of Jupiter’s scientifically interesting moons.

That is, unless NASA decides to extend the mission, as has happened frequently in the past.

Clipper is not the first mission to explore the icy moon. The Galileo spacecraft passed by the Moon in the 1990s, confirming scientists’ initial hopes that the Moon was more than a silent rock ball orbiting Earth. This excitement prompted scientists to formally request a dedicated Europe mission from NASA in the early 2000s.

But at the time, NASA was indifferent, having always had to weigh the potential for scientific discovery of bold flagship missions against the risk of cost overruns.

By 2013, NASA had just finished dealing with cost overruns on its Mars rover Curiosity, and the agency was focused on launching the James Webb Space Telescope into space. All the while, Congress was cutting the planetary science budget by nearly half what it was a decade ago.

So Science Guy joined us.

“We realized 10 years ago at the Planetary Society that this (mission) was possible, so we just set out to do it,” Nye said. “Look, guys, write letters, send emails. Write it down, talk to your legislators, and come here.” Days of our actions. ”

The Pasadena-based nonprofit Planetary Society, of which Nye is the chief executive and longtime member, has decided to focus its full efforts on the European mission. Its leaders testified before Congress and spoke at the Capitol. Planetary Society members wrote more than 375,000 messages of support to Congress and the White House.

In 2014, the agency clearly told scientists and Congress in its budget request that it would not fund the European mission.

“That will never happen,” said Casey Dreier, head of space policy at the Planetary Society. “They never make a budget request and say, “We’re not going to do something. We don’t have the money. Basically, stop asking.”

But by the next year, NASA asked Congress for $15 million to begin a multibillion-dollar investigation. A Texas lawmaker who was a champion of space funding and had power in the budget process decided to give $100 million to the space agency.

NASA selected JPL to design and build the spacecraft.

“It’s not all that surprising that JPL would win contracts for planetary missions,” said Matthew Shindel, curator of planetary science and exploration at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

“They have a really great track record,” he said. “So we’re one of the most trusted centers at NASA when it comes to developing large-scale robotic missions.”

Today, large, strategic science missions are once again in the doldrums as inflation further strains NASA’s budget and drives up the cost of its current focus, human spaceflight. That also created difficulties for JPL.

A Congressional-mandated investigation in September found that NASA failed to make critical long-term investments in infrastructure and workforce in exchange for funding expensive missions.

Once Clipper leaves Earth, the remaining future flagship missions are either in the early stages or embroiled in financial and management woes.

As a result, JPL has few major projects to keep money flowing to its more than 5,000 employees. Clipper’s engineering work has ended, and NASA headquarters has largely halted its other flagship program, Mars Sample Return, citing high anticipated costs and delays.

NASA has seen major funding and cost overrun concerns ebb and flow for decades, and with that comes JPL’s future.

In the 1980s, JPL barely survived as the Reagan administration considered spinning off the laboratory as a civilian institution and canceling its only flagship mission, Galileo.

This ordeal led to the establishment of the Planetary Society.

Fortunately, the California Institute of Technology trustees who manage JPL were aware of the U.S. Senate Majority Leader, and the lab and the Galileo mission were effectively saved and would later revolutionize scientists’ understanding of Europa. will bring and inspire the Clipper mission.

“Sometimes it’s really important to find a champion,” Dreyer said. This is not just a supporter, but someone who actually has the power to move money. “And right now, JPL doesn’t have that.”

2024 Los Angeles Times

Quote: Scientists have long urged NASA to search for signs of life near Jupiter. Now It’s Happening (October 9, 2024) Retrieved October 9, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-urged-nasa-life-jupiter.html

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