Europa is thought to have subsurface oceans with rocky bottoms, which, on Earth at least, are a source life-supporting chemistry. Scientists would like to scan the moon's surface for bits of material that may have seeped up from beneath the ice. "Imagine if there were microbes entrained in material that has exuded onto the surface of Europa...and they've been sitting there for maybe three million years," said Dalton, an expert in infrared spectroscopy. "If we could drop a lander and sample that stuff that would be very exciting." NASA's blueprints for a Europa orbiter include room for a small lander, but no lander itself just yet. "The community wants to land, they want to get down on the surface...but in terms of the expense of the mission, we just weren't able to fit it in," said Dalton, who was an adviser on NASA's Jupiter mission studies. "We tried to keep enough mass available on the spacecraft so that there could be room for a lander if someone could come up with a cheap way...Apparently the Russians have stepped up to the plate," Dalton added. He, for one, believes the decision already has been made to head to Europa and the workshop in Moscow is no coincidence of timing. "There's a bunch of us around here all biting our fingernails trying to figure out what it's going to be," Dalton told Discovery News. "Two sections of the community of astronomers have been pitted against each other -- the ones that want to go to Titan and the ones that that want to go to Europa." "It's unfortunate that there has to be a decision," added Hand. "It's important to go to both. They are both such amazing and tantalizing worlds in terms of finding life." Related Links: |
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