Many scientists today are sure that the subglacial ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa can hide certain signs of life and therefore recommend penetrating the satellite's ice cover and find out what it hides.
The global ocean, containing twice as much water as all of the Earth's seas, is covered with an ice sheet from 15 to 25 km. Many astrobiologists believe that a satellite with a diameter of 3,100 km is one of the best candidates in the solar system for the presence of extraterrestrial life. Investigations carried out using images from the Hubble Space Telescope provided evidence of water vapor plumes streaming from the southern polar region in Europa, which led scientists to speculate that material from the ocean could fall on the icy surface of the satellite.
All this looks like an exciting prospect for NASA, whose representatives have already announced that they will deliver a lander to Europe in the 2020s in order to find chemical evidence that life is possible on the satellite. While surface sampling is important, the researchers believe, the best samples are found much deeper.
“We have to get down, below the surface,” said Britney Schmidt, a planetary scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who developed NASA's Europa Lander concept. “People want us to drill through Europe and find fish. This is not realistic at the moment, but in the future we will have the opportunity to discover biogenic molecules, molecules that are essential for life. '
This means that it is necessary to drill the ice of Europe. Schmidt believes that the mission should drill at least 10 centimeters, to a place where thrusters will not contaminate the ice and cosmic radiation will not destroy the biogenic molecules necessary for life.
