‘Europa Clipper’: NASA launches largest interplanetary spacecraft to search for traces of life on Jupiter’s moon | Science

The largest interplanetary spacecraft built by NASA took off this Monday at 18:06 Peninsula Time aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The launch was suspended due to Hurricane Milton’s passage through Florida, where the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral is located. Fate of the mission hair clipper Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons. Although temperatures are more than 200 degrees below freezing and plagued by radiation that can kill a person in a matter of hours, it is one of the places with the greatest potential for harboring life beyond Earth.

Mission officials have asked Elon Musk’s company to remove from its rocket all the engines and circuitry that would normally be used to recover spent Falcon Heavy stages because hair clipper It needs as much thrust as possible to overcome Earth’s gravity and complete the nearly 3 billion-year journey to Jupiter’s distant moon. During the launch, he broke the speed record for the second stage of the launch vehicle – about 40,000 kilometers per hour.

“hair clipper “This will be the first mission to study in depth the habitability of what may be the most common type of habitable world in the Universe,” Gina DiBraccio, head of the US Space Agency’s planetary science division, said at a press conference.

So far, people have discovered more than 5,700 exoplanets outside the solar system. The vast majority of them are gas giants such as Jupiter, which has 95 moons. If it is proven that the second origin of life existed in Europe, the chances of this happening in any other corner of space will increase.

The surface of Europa is a layer of ice about 20 kilometers thick, in which deep reddish cracks can be seen, similar to the veins in a giant eye. It may be sulfur, a compound associated with volcanism. In the so-called Lands of Chaos, cracks in the ice do not exceed 90 million years, which is an instant in geological terms. This implies that there must be some underground activity in this body. Scientists know that beneath the ice there is a deep global ocean containing twice as much water as all the oceans on Earth. And in the deepest part there will be a rocky bottom with possible thermal activity. “On Earth,” explains Bonnie Buratti, one of the mission’s chief scientists, “there are these heat pipes where we think life could have originated.”

This moon of Jupiter is very similar in size to ours and likely has the three things necessary to support life: water, organic compounds and energy. It also had a lot of time to evolve, since Jupiter was one of the first planets to form after the emergence of the Sun about 4.5 billion years ago, and Europa is made of the same materials as its planet. Main goal hair clipper The goal is to confirm that Europa’s ocean could support life, likely microbes, that don’t need oxygen to survive, just minerals and energy coming from its depths.

Europe Clipper It got its name from the legendary sailing ships of the 19th century that crossed the Atlantic in record time. Its dimensions are impressive: more than thirty meters from edge to edge of the huge solar panels and six meters in height. It is the largest interplanetary spacecraft developed by NASA, and also one of the most expensive: it cost approximately $5 billion.

hair clipper will explore Europe to a level of detail never before achieved. Its nine scientific instruments will be able to see details on its surface with a resolution of one meter. The radars will refine the depth of the ice shell, refine the depth of the ocean, look for shallower pockets of liquid water and hot spots through which minerals and possibly microbes can leak. “If there is life on Europa, it must be in the ocean, so we won’t be able to see it directly,” says Buratti. “Yes, we can identify organic compounds (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen) on the surface that are precursors to life.” The mission outlined by this veteran planetary scientist and astronomer is to “find the ingredients of life, not life itself.”

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, but it is so fierce that it looks more like a star. A magnetic field of about 20 million kilometers is generated around it, filled with charged atomic particles accelerated to almost the speed of light. This is the post-nuclear war environment, capable of burning the chains of any ship that gets too close.

This year, those responsible for the mission realized that the ship contained dozens of chips that, contrary to popular belief, could have stopped working due to high radiation. NASA has commissioned timed work to analyze the actual longevity of these components to confirm whether it should be launched hair clipper It will be practically useless as it will stop working. NASA’s analysis suggests the designs will stand the test of time, in part because they will be able to recover from high levels of radiation, since the ship will only be in the most hazardous conditions once every 21 days.

The ship will make up to 49 flybys of Europe, passing just 25 kilometers from the surface, which is a record. But then he plans to leave again before the next dive. Bye hair clipper focused on Europe, it will be monitored by a European ship. Mission juice The European Space Agency was launched last year and is due to reach the vicinity of Jupiter at the same time. This will allow one probe to observe the other as they approach Jupiter’s moons. The dance of spaceships in the far reaches of the solar system is unprecedented.

“If I had to bet on where there is life in the solar system beyond Earth right now, I’m sure it would be on Europa or on Enceladus (a moon of Saturn),” admits Olga Prieto Ballesteros, a geologist at the Center for Astrobiology under Madrid. , participate in the mission juice. The European probe has broader goals – studying Jupiter’s magnetic field and focusing on mapping Ganymede, another of its icy moons.

hair clipper scheduled to reach Jupiter in April 2030, and juicein the middle of next year. Their useful life will be about four years, partly due to the enormous damage that radiation will cause them. At the end of their lives, both ships will go on a suicide flight to crash on Ganymede to avoid infecting Europa and its eventual life.