[FPSPACE] Jupiter's Europa - Will It Provide the 1st Proof of Extraterrestrial Life?

[LARRY KLAES]

Jupiter's Europa - Will It Provide the 1st Proof of Extraterrestrial Life?

To quote:

With Jupiter being the largest planet in the solar system, its tidal 
stresses on Europa create enough heat to keep the water on Europa in a 
liquid state. More than just water is needed to support life. Tides also 
play a role in providing for life. Ocean tides on Europa are much greater in 
size than Earth's with heights reaching 500 meters (more than 1,600 feet). 
Even the shape of the moon is stretched along the equator due to Jupiter's 
pull on the waters below the icy surface.

The mixing of substances needed to support life is also driven by tides. 
Stable environments are also necessary for life to flourish. Europa, whose 
orbit around Jupiter is in-sync with its rotation, is able to keep the same 
face towards the gas giant for thousands of years. The ocean is interacting 
with the surface, according to Greenberg, and "there is a possible biosphere 
that extends from way below the surface to just above the crust."

"The real key to life on Europa," Greenburg adds, "is the permeability of 
the ice crust. There is strong evidence that the ocean below the ice is 
connected to the surface through cracks and melting, at various times and 
places. As a result, the biosphere, if there is one, includes not just the 
liquid water ocean, but it extends through the ice up to the surface where 
there is access to oxidants, organic compounds, and light for 
photosynthesis. The physical setting provides a variety of potentially 
habitable and evolving niches. If there is life there, it would not 
necessarily be restricted to microorganisms."

...

The future NASA DepthX mission to Europa, scheduled for 2019, is a 
mushroom-shaped machine, an underwater hydrobot that 'thinks' for itself. 
DepthX is currently undergoing tests in one of the world's deepest flooded 
cave systems -the El Zacaton cave complex in Mexico- to simulate penetrating 
the Europa's ice-covered seas. The next version of the machine will be 
tested in Lake Vostok, a deep ice-covered lake in the Antarctic. The craft 
sent to Europa would use nuclear power to melt through the 10km of ice that 
cover the moon's ocean. The mission will be one of the most complex ever 
attempted by the American space agency NASA.

Full article here:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/04/jupiters-europa.html