NASA Wants Help on Possible Europa Lander Instruments

Europa 

NASA is asking scientists to think about what would be the best instruments to include on a mission to land on Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. The space agency recently asked the science community to prepare for a planned competition to select science instruments for a potential Europa lander.

Even though a mission to land on the scientifically tantalizing Jovian moon Europa has not yet approved by the space agency, NASA's Planetary Science Division has funding this year to conduct the announcement of opportunity process.

"The possibility of placing a lander on the surface of this intriguing icy moon, touching and exploring a world that might harbor life is at the heart of the Europa lander mission."

“The possibility of placing a lander on the surface of this intriguing icy moon, touching and exploring a world that might harbor life is at the heart of the Europa lander mission,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “We want the community to be prepared for this announcement of opportunity, because NASA recognizes the immense amount of work involved in preparing proposals for this potential future exploration.”

Image - NASA/JPL-Caltech

The formal community announcement provides advance notice of NASA’s plan to hold a competition for instrument investigations for a potential Europa lander mission. Proposed investigations will be evaluated and selected through a two-step competitive process to fund development of a variety of relevant instruments and then to ensure the instruments are compatible with the mission concept.

Related articles

• The European Space Agency Is Juiced About Jupiter's Moons 
• NASA Researchers Confident We Will Discover Alien Life Soon 
• NASA Planning Robotic Mission To Europa To Search for Life 

Approximately 10 proposals may be selected to proceed into a competitive first phase. The Phase A concept study will be limited to approximately 12 months with a $1.5 million budget per investigation. At the conclusion of these studies, NASA may select some of these concepts to complete Phase A and subsequent mission phases.

NASA has stated the goals of the instruments should be:

1. to search for evidence of life on Europa
2. to assess the habitability of Europa via in situ techniques uniquely available to a lander mission
3. and to characterize surface and subsurface properties at the scale of the lander

Last year, in response to a congressional directive, NASA’s Planetary Science Division began a study to assess the science and engineering design of a future Europa lander mission. NASA routinely conducts such studies long before the start of any mission to gain an understanding of the challenges, feasibility and science value of the potential mission. The research team began work almost one year ago.

The proposed Europa lander is separate from and would follow its predecessor, the Europa Clipper multiple flyby mission – which now is in preliminary design phase and planned for launch in the early 2020s. Arriving in the Jupiter system after a journey of several years, the spacecraft would orbit the planet about every two weeks, providing opportunities for 40 to 45 flybys in the prime mission.

The Clipper spacecraft will image Europa’s icy surface at high resolution, and investigate its composition and structure of its interior and icy shell.

Of course, many of us remain quietly excited by the Europa missions, and have a secret wish for Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction vision to be at least a little bit on the mark.

SOURCE  NASA

By  33rd Square	Embed