A spacecraft left from the Cape Canaveral Station in Florida, in the southeastern part of the United States, to find out if there is real life outside the Earth on one of the moons that surround Jupiter.
The mission’s launch was delayed by Hurricane Milton’s arrival in the region last week, so the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) postponed it to a new date and sent them into space on Monday, October 14, at 12:06 local time (16:06 GMT).
The Europa Clipper spacecraft will have to travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa, a strange moon orbiting Jupiter that will not enter its orbit until 2030.
Despite the long journey of the spacecraft, once it reaches the moon, what it discovers will greatly change our thinking about the universe around us and our understanding of life in our solar system.
It is possible that there is a large ocean under the outer shadow of that moon which contains twice as much water as is found in the oceans on Earth.
The vehicle will benefit from cosmic propulsion systems or a cosmic back mounted on its roof, to travel faster, and not only will it be able to catch up with a European mission that traveled in the same direction last year, but it will also be possible to overtake and reach the destination first.
A brighter moon
After years of work and preparation, the launch of the Europa Clipper was canceled at the last minute after Hurricane Milton hit Florida recently.
The spacecraft was immediately moved to the garage and shelter, and after inspecting the launch pad at Cape Canaver and making sure it wasn’t exposed to any damage, engineers gave the green light for liftoff. .
Mark Fox Powell, a planetary microbiologist at the Open University, said: “If life is found on this moon far from the Sun, this would mean that the source of that life is independent of the origin of life on Earth.
“This is very important,” according to Powell, “because if life arises elsewhere in the solar system, it means that life could be widespread. “
Europa is 628 million kilometers from Earth, which is slightly larger than our moon but other than that, there are no other objects like it.
If it were within our view, the sunlight it reflects would be five times brighter due to its icy surface.
The thickness of the ice reaches 25 kilometers, and it is believed that there is a large ocean of salty water under it. There may also be chemicals that make up the simple parts of life.
Scientists first realized that it could provide living conditions in the 1970s when they noticed, through an astronomical observation telescope mounted on a mountain in the US state of Arizona, the presence of water ice on its surface.
Then the space probes Voyager 1 and 2 sent the first close-up images, and in 1995, the Galileo spacecraft, sent by NASA to study Jupiter and its moons, flew close to Europa and took pictures of which showed what was really interesting.
The images showed a surface full of reddish-brown cracks, which could contain salts and sulfur compounds that could support the hypothesis of life. As for the images obtained through the Hubble Telescope, they showed what could be columns of water vapor rising 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
But none of these missions got close enough to Europa to properly understand its nature.
Flying through flying water columns
Scientists now hope that the elements and instruments equipped with the Clipper spacecraft will be able to map almost the entire moon, as well as its collecting dust particles and flying through rising water pumps.
Brittney Schmidt, an assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University in the United States, helped equip the vehicle with laser technology to allow it to go and see through the ice.
“I’m very passionate about understanding what’s going on on Europa and the water systems there. Where is this water found? “.
She continued, “Europa is the frozen version of subduction zones (that is, areas where one tectonic plate is subducted under another), magma storage chambers, and tectonic components that identify the Earth’s mantle, and we will try to see these areas in Europa. and map them.”
According to NASA’s website, the rover will use REASON high-frequency waves to penetrate Europa’s ice to a depth of 18 miles (30 kilometers), and its effectiveness has been tested in Antarctica.
But unlike ground tests, all the technology on Clipper will be exposed to a lot of radiation, which Professor Schmidt says is a “big concern”.
The spacecraft is expected to fly past Europa about 50 times, and each time, the amount of radiation energy it receives will be a million times stronger than the X-rays.
Professor Schmidt explains that “many of the essential technologies and electronic devices on board the vehicle are heavily shielded to avoid intense radiation. “
Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft ever built to carry out interplanetary missions, and it is waiting for a long voyage in space.
It will travel a distance of 1.8 billion miles, and will pass by Earth and Mars so that it can hurl itself towards Jupiter, known as the “slingshot effect”.
It will not be able to carry enough fuel to continue its journey to the end, so it will depend on the movement it receives in the Earth’s atmosphere and then on the acceleration of gravity on the surface of Mars.
Not only will it follow the European Space Agency’s Goss mission, which will also visit Europa on its way to another target moon of Jupiter called Ganymede to study life there, but Clipper ahead of him.
As soon as Clipper approaches Europa, which is expected in 2030, it will turn on its engines again to carefully sense the correct orbit and complete the hull position maneuver.
Space scientists are very cautious when they talk about the chances of finding life in space. on Earth, whether it is humans or animals.
“We are looking for what may indicate that some form of life may have crashed or thrived on the surface of any of the other planets,” explained Michelle Dougherty, professor an astrophysicist at Imperial College London at four elements – the presence of liquid water; “Heat source, organic matter, and finally, these three components have to be stable over a long enough time for something to evolve.”
They also hope that if they can study Europa’s icy surface, they can determine the best landing site for any future missions.
This flight is led by an international team of scientists from NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
At a time when spacecraft climb outside the Earth almost every week, this mission promises something different, suggests Professor Fox Powell.
“There is no profit,” he said.
