{"id":24674,"date":"2024-10-15T06:36:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T06:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=24674"},"modified":"2024-10-15T06:36:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T06:36:43","slug":"nasa-to-search-signs-of-life-in-jupiter-europa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/10\/nasa-to-search-signs-of-life-in-jupiter-europa\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA to search signs of life in Jupiter, Europa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; A NASA spacecraft has set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon\u2019s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won\u2019t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there, reported Guardian.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">\u201cIt\u2019s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today \u2013 right now,\u201d said the program scientist Curt Niebur.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">Its enormous solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take five and a half years to reach Jupiter and will sneak within 16 miles (25km) of Europa\u2019s surface \u2013 considerably closer than any other spacecraft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">One of Jupiter\u2019s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It is encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 to 15 miles or more (15 to 24 km) thick. Scientists believe this frozen crust hides an ocean that could be 80 miles (120km) or more deep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">The Hubble\u00a0Space\u00a0Telescope has spotted what appear to be geysers erupting from the surface. Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Europa is one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Ganymede, Io and Callisto.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">What type of life might Europa harbor? Besides water, organic compounds are needed for life as we know it, plus an energy source. In Europa\u2019s case, that could be thermal vents on the ocean floor. The deputy project scientist Bonnie Buratti imagines any life would be primitive like the bacterial life that originated in Earth\u2019s deep ocean vents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">The roundabout trip to Jupiter will span 1.8bn miles (3bn km). For extra oomph, the spacecraft will swing past Mars early next year and then Earth in late 2026. It arrives at Jupiter in 2030 and begins science work the next year. While orbiting Jupiter, it will cross paths with Europa 49 times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1eu361v\">The mission ends in 2034 with a planned crash into Ganymede \u2013 Jupiter\u2019s biggest moon.<\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>ENDS<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A NASA spacecraft has set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":24679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,194,982,351,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-world","category-international","category-science-technology","category-headline"],"views":49,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24680,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674\/revisions\/24680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}