Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
The highly anticipated expedition to the Jovian moon Europa announced by NASA earlier this year may not be a one-off trip, and the US space agency could be planning follow-up missions as part of a full-scale campaign that could send a lander to its ice-covered surface.
According to Space.com, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that people who have been exercising frustration with the limited scope of the currently planned Europa mission should be patient, because the agency has bigger plans for the moon than they have made public.
“My friends in the science community – they don’t have a lot of faith, either in us at NASA or in Congress, to fund another Europa mission, so they’d like to get everything on this first mission,” Bolden reportedly said at the Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Los Angeles on May 26. “That is a sure recipe for disaster, when you try to do all things with one vehicle.”
“We need to do incremental approaches to studying Europa,” he added during a media event at the facility. “We’re going to fly a Europa mission in the 2020s sometime, and hopefully, what we find will whet our appetite and there will be follow-on Europa missions.”
First mission may be scouting for a future Europa lander
During the first planned mission to the 1,900 mile (3,100 km) wide moon, NASA will send a spacecraft outfitted with a suite of nine instruments, including high-resolution cameras and ice-penetrating radar, to examine Europa’s ocean and its rocky mantle.
If the water and the mantle come in contact with one another, it could mean that a variety of complex chemical reactions are taking place on the Jovian moon, and that Europa may even be capable of supporting life. (Yay!) Astrobiologists have long dreamed of studying the moon, and in about a decade, they will finally have their chance to do so.
Bolden’s comments indicate that it may not be their only chance, however. The administrator said that if the first mission is successful, “then we’re going to go to Europa again,” and that any future missions could include a probe to land on the surface and search for signs of life.
The initial Europa spacecraft will complete 45 flybys of the moon, and in addition to collecting science data, it will be serving as a scout for possible future journeys there. A future lander mission could also go beneath the surface and come into contact with water, and NASA scientists are said to be working on ways to penetrate Europa’s icy shell.
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