A Mission to Uncover Alien Life on Jupiter’s Mysterious Moon
In a highly anticipated event, a spacecraft is poised to launch from Florida, embarking on a groundbreaking mission to search for signs of alien life. Its target: Europa, a captivating moon orbiting the distant planet Jupiter. Beneath its icy surface, scientists speculate, lies a vast ocean potentially holding twice as much water as Earth.
The Europa Clipper spacecraft is set to catch up with a European mission launched last year, using a cosmic piggyback to overtake and reach Europa first. Although its arrival is projected for 2030, the mission’s findings could redefine our understanding of life within our solar system.
Years of preparation culminated in a last-minute delay due to Hurricane Milton’s impact on Florida, prompting engineers to temporarily shelter the spacecraft. Following thorough inspections, the launch is now cleared for 12:06 PM local time (17:06 BST) on October 14.
“If we discover life so far away from the Sun, it would imply a separate origin of life to the Earth,” notes Mark Fox-Powell, a planetary microbiologist at the Open University. “That is hugely significant because if that happens twice in our solar system, it could mean life is really common,” he adds.
The Europa enigma
Europa, 628 million kilometers from Earth, is slightly larger than our moon but vastly different. Its icy crust, up to 25 kilometers thick, conceals a potential saltwater ocean teeming with the building blocks of life. If visible from our skies, Europa would shine five times brighter due to its reflective water ice.
Historical glimpses of potential
Interest in Europa as a candidate for life dates back to the 1970s when astronomers spotted water ice through Arizona telescopes. Voyager 1 and 2 captured close-up images, and NASA’s Galileo spacecraft later provided puzzling pictures of the moon’s surface, marked by reddish-brown cracks potentially harboring life-supporting compounds.
The James Webb telescope has since captured images suggesting plumes of water erupting 160 kilometers above Europa’s surface. However, no mission has yet lingered long enough to unravel Europa’s mysteries.
Mapping the unknown
NASA’s Clipper spacecraft aims to change that, equipped with instruments to map Europa and collect dust particles while flying through its water plumes. Britney Schmidt, associate professor at Cornell University, designed a laser to peer through the ice, explaining, “I’m most excited about understanding Europa’s plumbing. Where’s the water?” Her laser, named Reason, underwent testing in Antarctica.
A major concern is the intense radiation Clipper will face, equivalent to a million X-rays, as it flies past Europa approximately 50 times. “Much of the electronics are in a vault that’s heavily shielded to keep out radiation,” Prof. Schmidt explains.
As the largest spacecraft ever constructed for a planetary visit, Clipper will travel 1.8 billion miles, using gravitational slingshots around Earth and Mars to propel itself toward Jupiter. It will surpass the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission, which also aims to explore Europa en route to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
The quest for habitability
Space scientists exercise caution when discussing the likelihood of discovering life. “We are searching for the potential for habitability, and you need four things – liquid water, a heat source, and organic material,” explains Michelle Dougherty, professor of space physics at Imperial College London. “Finally, those three ingredients need to be stable over a long enough period of time that something can happen.”
A mission of pure exploration
An international team from NASA, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab will guide this odyssey. Amidst frequent space launches, Professor Fox-Powell emphasizes the mission’s unique promise: “There’s no profit being made. This is about exploration and curiosity, and pushing back the boundaries of our knowledge of our place in the universe.”