Future Missions
Conjecture on extraterrestrial life has ensured a high profile for the moon and has led to steady lobbying for future missions. The aims of these missions have ranged from examining Europa's chemical composition to searching for extraterrestrial life in its hypothesized subsurface oceans. Missions to Europa need to survive the high radiation environment around itself and Jupiter. Europa receives about 540 rem of radiation per day.
In 2012, Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer was selected by the ESA as a planned mission. That mission includes some flybys of Europa, but is more focused on Ganymede.
In 2011, a Europa mission was recommended by the latest Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Missions to study Europa in response to this recommendation included concepts for an orbiter or flyby spacecraft, and for a lander. Instrument payload for an orbiter could include a radio subsystem, laser altimeter, magnetometer, Langmuir prove, and a mapping camera.
Read more about this topic: Europa (moon)
Famous quotes containing the words future and/or missions:
“For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.”
—George Linnaeus Banks (1821–1881)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)