Are aliens secretly splashing around beneath the surface of an icy Jupiter moon? NASA unveiled an interplanetary probe on Thursday intended to find out what is going on.
The $5 billion Clipper probe is scheduled to depart in October aboard a Space solar system.
The device will travel for more than five years and will notably pass through Mars before entering orbit around Jupiter and Europa in 2031, if all goes as planned.
“One of the fundamental questions NASA wants to understand is, ‘Are we alone in the cosmos?’ », Explains Bob Pappalardo, mission scientist, to AFP.
If proof of life were discovered, “it would be a huge step forward in understanding how widespread life is in the universe,” he adds.
The device is currently kept in a sterile room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, accessible only to personnel covered from head to toe.
All precautions are taken so that the probe does not bring any Earth microbes to Europa.
Once its mission begins, Clipper will begin a detailed inspection of this Jupiter satellite, comparable in size to the Moon, which scientists believe is covered in frozen water.
“We have instruments like cameras, spectrometers, a magnetometer and radar that can […] penetrate the ice, bounce off the liquid water and come back to the surface to tell us how thick the ice is and where the liquid water is,” continues Mr. Pappalardo.
Those responsible for the mission are not hoping to find little green men splashing around: in fact, they are not necessarily looking for signs of life, only conditions favorable to it.
Scientists know that even in extreme climates on Earth, under the ice cap in environments without light, small forms of life can exist.
“If the moons around the planets far from the stars could host life, then the number of possibilities in the solar system, in the universe, for life to be present, increases drastically, I think,” said Jordan Evans, project leader. for the Europa Clipper mission.
100,000 chest x-rays
The study of Europa will not be easy, however: a powerful field of radiation encompasses Jupiter’s natural satellite and it could damage the instruments of Clipper, which will receive the equivalent of 100,000 chest x-rays at each loop around its objective .
Due to the distance, the probe data will take 45 minutes to arrive at the control station.
And despite its enormous solar panels that will deploy once in space, it will be difficult to keep Clipper in service, according to Mr. Evans.
“Near the earth, they could power 20 houses continuously. And (near) Jupiter, only a few light bulbs and small devices,” due to the planet’s distance from the Sun, he explains.
The mission, planning for which began in the late 1990s, is scheduled to end around 2034, when Clipper will have reached the end of its useful life.
The probe’s final step will be to crash into a moon of Jupiter, says Tim Larson, deputy project leader.
“When we’re done with the science mission, the way to end it is to crash into one of the other (celestial) bodies in the Jovian system available to the device,” he concluded. “For the moment”, NASA plans to launch the probe against Ganymede, the largest natural satellite of Jupiter, he specifies.