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Where to search for life on Europa
Much of Europa's surface is relatively unscarred by craters. Some think
volcanic activity resurfaces the moon. With Europan volcanoes, the "lava" would be liquid water from beneath the moon's surface. The "basalt" would be frozen water ice, like the stuff we find mammoths in. IMO, we don't need to drill through Europa's icey crust to search for life. Surface ice in regions of recent volcanic activity would be a good place to look. -- Hop David http://clowder.net/hop/index.html |
#2
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Europa
I think we should drop a rover in one of those deep cracks. It's a
likely place to find relatively fresh material from below the ice. It would be a waste of resources to not include at least a lander if not a rover on JIMO. I think it should have several in fact. Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY ** ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com ----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- |
#3
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Europa
In article ,
Buck Galaxy wrote: It would be a waste of resources to not include at least a lander if not a rover on JIMO. I think it should have several in fact. Trouble is, landing on Europa is *hard*. It's a big moon with no significant atmosphere, so you'll need a lot of rocket braking for a soft landing. All the more so if you come in at greater than Europa escape velocity. (If memory serves, none of the Europa-mission concepts, not even JIMO, envisions actually orbiting Europa -- rather, the intent is to orbit Jupiter and make repeated Europa encounters.) That means that a lander is not a compact little spacecraft, but a compact little spacecraft on top of a big multistage rocket. This is not a minor add-on to an orbiter mission. Survival on the surface is also a bit problematic, since it's a high- radiation environment. (Orbiters can mitigate this by using elliptical orbits and spending most of their time at higher altitude.) -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
#4
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Europa
Henry Spencer wrote:
Trouble is, landing on Europa is *hard*. It's a big moon with no significant atmosphere, so you'll need a lot of rocket braking for a soft landing. All the more so if you come in at greater than Europa escape velocity. (If memory serves, none of the Europa-mission concepts, not even JIMO, envisions actually orbiting Europa -- rather, the intent is to orbit Jupiter and make repeated Europa encounters.) Nope. The intention is "[l]ow altitude, high inclination orbits of all three icy moons." JIMO will brake into a very high orbit of one of the moons, slowly spiral down, then spiral back up and move along. I'm pretty sure the final state will be a low orbit around Europa. Seeing as how Europa is the cornerstone of the mission it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to get the least science there. It's right on the main JIMO website in the short list of "key capabities of the mission": http://ossim.hq.nasa.gov/jimo/ Additionally, the JIMO SDT report* includes a recommendation for a "Europa surface science package". Which, this early in the design phase, could potentially be anything from a drop zond to a surface station to an ice melter with a DSRV. (*) http://ossim.hq.nasa.gov/jimo/JIMO_SDT_REPORT.pdf |
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Europa
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#6
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Europa
Henry Spencer wrote:
...(If memory serves, none of the Europa-mission concepts, not even JIMO, envisions actually orbiting Europa -- rather, the intent is to orbit Jupiter and make repeated Europa encounters.) As others have pointed out, JIMO proposes to orbit Europa, as well as Ganymede and Callisto. Indeed, even the now-defunct original Europa Orbiter mission concept proposed to insert into europan orbit. Looks like you'll be handing out an ICH T-shirt to Christopher ;-) -- Alex R. Blackwell University of Hawaii |
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Europa
On 2004-07-07, Alex R. Blackwell wrote:
Henry Spencer wrote: ...(If memory serves, none of the Europa-mission concepts, not even JIMO, envisions actually orbiting Europa -- rather, the intent is to orbit Jupiter and make repeated Europa encounters.) As others have pointed out, JIMO proposes to orbit Europa, as well as Ganymede and Callisto. Indeed, even the now-defunct original Europa Orbiter mission concept proposed to insert into europan orbit. I'd love to see the pitch for the mission if they didn't. Attention-grabbing, sure, but it'd be a little misleading otherwise... -- -Andrew Gray |
#8
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Europa
Alex R. Blackwell wrote:
Henry Spencer wrote: ...(If memory serves, none of the Europa-mission concepts, not even JIMO, envisions actually orbiting Europa -- rather, the intent is to orbit Jupiter and make repeated Europa encounters.) As others have pointed out, JIMO proposes to orbit Europa, as well as Ganymede and Callisto. Indeed, even the now-defunct original Europa Orbiter mission concept proposed to insert into europan orbit. Looks like you'll be handing out an ICH T-shirt to Christopher ;-) Nah, he hedged before hand so it doesn't count. |
#9
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Europa
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message ...
Henry Spencer wrote: Trouble is, landing on Europa is *hard*. It's a big moon with no significant atmosphere, so you'll need a lot of rocket braking for a soft landing. All the more so if you come in at greater than Europa escape velocity. (If memory serves, none of the Europa-mission concepts, not even JIMO, envisions actually orbiting Europa -- rather, the intent is to orbit Jupiter and make repeated Europa encounters.) Nope. The intention is "[l]ow altitude, high inclination orbits of all three icy moons." JIMO will brake into a very high orbit of one of the moons, slowly spiral down, then spiral back up and move along. I'm pretty sure the final state will be a low orbit around Europa. Seeing as how Europa is the cornerstone of the mission it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to get the least science there. It's right on the main JIMO website in the short list of "key capabities of the mission": http://ossim.hq.nasa.gov/jimo/ Additionally, the JIMO SDT report* includes a recommendation for a "Europa surface science package". Which, this early in the design phase, could potentially be anything from a drop zond to a surface station to an ice melter with a DSRV. (*) http://ossim.hq.nasa.gov/jimo/JIMO_SDT_REPORT.pdf I wonder whether three almost identical vehicles would be cheaper, possibly using one to relay information to the others. |
#10
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Europa
Alex Terrell wrote:
I wonder whether three almost identical vehicles would be cheaper, possibly using one to relay information to the others. Unlikely. The enabling technology for a Jovian Moon orbiter mission is nuclear electric propulsion. The Isps involved are sufficiently high so that in this delta V range the mass ratio scales pretty close to linearly with regard to delta V increases. More importantly, if you max out the achievable mass ratio (within reason) on a NEP mission you end up with a hell of a lot more delta V capability than is needed for orbiting a single Galilean moon. Potentially, an all-chemical propulsion set of missions could be cheaper with more spacecraft, depending on the details. With NEP the added cost of bigger tanks with more propellant is likely to be small compared to the cost of duplicate spacecraft and propulsion systems. |
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