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bmnb123
New Member
USA
21 Posts |
 Posted - 02/12/2009 : 14:47:51
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I found this on slashdot.
"NASA and the European Space Agency are expected later this week to settle an ongoing debate on whether to send a robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Titan. Both are difficult places to get to — a mission to either would cost several billion dollars/euros to build and execute — and both have become alluring targets in the quest to learn whether Earth alone supports life. On the one hand, Europa is believed to have liquid oceans beneath its frozen crust which (on Earth at least) are a source of life-supporting chemistry. Scientists would like to scan Europa'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,' says planetary scientist Dr. Brad Dalton. On the other hand, Titan has two enticing features in the search for life: liquids on the surface, and a thick atmosphere that can be used to slow down a spacecraft and help put it into orbit. Titan's surface water is locked into the crust as ice, but scientists suspect there may be a subsurface ocean where water mingles with ammonia. The mission will not get to the launch pad before 2020. 'It's unfortunate that there has to be a decision,' says NASA/JPL astrobiologist Dr. Kevin Hand. 'It's important to go to both. They are both such amazing and tantalizing worlds in terms of finding life.'"
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/02/10/2487461.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7842254.stm
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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 02/12/2009 : 18:14:31 [Permalink]
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| I doubt either probe will be equiped to do anything more than a most basic test for a couple of things that could indicate the presence of life anyway. Look how many probes have been sent to Mars and still they still have barely scratched the surface. It's going to be a LONG time before any detailed analysis of those moons can take place, which is why I would be in favour of larger more expensive, long term missions, rather than these glorified webcams they keep sending all over the place. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 02/12/2009 : 21:44:08 [Permalink]
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I guess they know what they are doing.
I suppose there is a limit to how heavy the probe they can send is going to be. In turn this limit the numbers of operations and the longevity of the mission... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Fly Me To Which Moon?
