NASA's Voyager Missions by Ben Evans

Author:Ben Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031079238
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

A pristine world of water

It seems unlikely, having travelled thus far into the Realm of Jove, that life or the building blocks of life could conceivably have thrived in this ferocious region of space. Jupiter had already harshly affected the Pioneers and during Galileo’s eight-year orbital mission in 1995–2003 the spacecraft absorbed four times more radiation than it was designed to withstand, even being knocked into precautionary safe mode several times. More recently, Juno – which has occupied a looping elliptical orbit since July 2016 and drawn closer to Jupiter than any previous mission – has been pounded with similar levels of ferocity.

Yet, hard as it may seem in this savage environment, primeval life may once have evolved here, or at least on Europa, one of the four large satellites found telescopically by Galileo Galilei. Europa has long been known to possess a water-ice crust, with the tantalising possibility of an ocean, perhaps 62 miles (100 kilometres) deep and possibly capable of sustaining microbial life in a fashion not dissimilar to the environment furnished by deep-ocean hydrothermal vents on the Earth. The Galileo spacecraft’s magnetometry data offered persuasive evidence for a subsurface ocean and Hubble observations in 2013 revealed water vapour leaking up to 125 miles (200 kilometres) into space from Europa’s south pole. In November 2020, a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggested that the plumes may originate from water within Europa’s crust, rather than necessarily the subsurface ocean itself. In any case, the plumes may be episodic in nature, but a more comprehensive understanding must await a lander or radar-equipped orbiter. Two orbiting missions – Europe’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and NASA’s Europa Clipper, due to launch in August 2023 and October 2024 – are expected to furnish greater insights.

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