THE NASA launched this Monday (14), the Europa Clipper spacecraft whose main objective is to investigate the moon Europe from Jupiter which science believes to be a promising place for life in the Solar System.
Gina DiBraccio, acting director of NASA’s planetary science division, told Reuters that there are three main requirements for life to form on Europe: liquid water right chemical — specifically organic compounds that could serve as food for any primitive organism — and a power source .
“Clipper will be the first in-depth mission that will allow us to characterize the habitability of what may be the most common type of inhabited world in our universe,” said the scientist.
The Europa Clipper spacecraft will be essential in helping NASA determine where to send follow-up missions, such as parts of the ice crust that may be thin and where subsurface ocean water may gush out, said Laurie Leshin, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. from NASA.
“If we get there and we do this investigation, and the good news is that it has all the ingredients and is habitable, what that means is that there are two places in a solar system that have all the ingredients for life that are habitable.” right now at the same time,” Niebur said.
“Think about what this means when you extend this result to the billions and billions of other solar systems in this galaxy,” he added. “Leaving aside the question of whether ‘life exists’ on Europa, just the question of habitability itself opens up a huge new paradigm for the search for life in the galaxy.”
What will the mission be like?
The US space agency’s solar-powered robotic spacecraft, Europa Clipper, was launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, carrying nine scientific instruments. After covering 2.9 billion km in a journey lasting around 5 and a half years, the Europa Clipper should enter into orbit around Jupiter in 2030 .
The Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission, measuring approximately 30.5 meters long, approximately 17.6 meters wide and weighing approximately 6,000 kg. It is larger than a basketball court because of its large solar panels, which capture sunlight to power scientific instruments, electronics and other subsystems.
The spacecraft must fly by Mars and then back by Earth, using each planet’s gravity like a slingshot to increase its speed. It has three main goals: measuring the thickness of Europa’s outer ice layer and its interactions with the subsurface below, discovering the moon’s composition and determining its geology.
NASA is planning for its spacecraft to perform 49 close flybys of Europa over a three-year period.
*With information from Reuters and CNN International
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This content was originally published in Understand why NASA sent a spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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