Europa

From the moon to Europa, six space missions to be excited for in 2024

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One the missions is a launch of NASA’s Artemis programme, of which India is part

A natural colour image of Jupiter’s moon Europa, the destination of NASA’s ‘Clipper’ mission slated for a late 2024 launch. | Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

The year 2023 proved to be an important one for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample from an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the lunar south pole region, and 2024 is shaping up to be another exciting year for space exploration.

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Several new missions under NASA’s Artemis plan and Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will target the moon.

The latter half of the year will feature several exciting launches, with the launch of the Martian Moons eXploration mission in September, Europa Clipper and Hera in October and Artemis II and VIPER to the moon in November – if everything goes as planned.

I’m a planetary scientist, and here are six of the space missions I’m most excited to follow in 2024.

1. Europa Clipper

NASA will launch Europa Clipper, which will explore one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. Europa is slightly smaller than the earth’s moon, with a surface made of ice. Beneath its icy shell, Europa likely harbours a saltwater ocean, which scientists expect contains over twice as much water as all the oceans here on Earth combined.

With Europa Clipper, scientists want to investigate whether Europa’s ocean could be a suitable habitat for extraterrestrial life.

The mission plans to do this by flying past Europa nearly 50 times to study the moon’s icy shell, its surface’s geology and its subsurface ocean. The mission will also look for active geysers spewing out from Europa.

This mission will change the game for scientists hoping to understand ocean worlds like Europa.

The launch window – the period when the mission could launch and achieve its planned route – opens October 10, 2024, and lasts 21 days. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030.

2. Artemis II launch

The Artemis programme, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to go back to the moon. It will send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman and the first person of color. Artemis also includes plans for a longer-term, sustained presence in space that will prepare NASA for eventually sending people even farther – to Mars.

Artemis II is the first crewed step in this plan, with four astronauts planned to be on board during the 10-day mission.

The mission builds upon Artemis I, which sent an uncrewed capsule into orbit around the moon in late 2022.

Artemis II will put the astronauts into orbit around the Moon before returning them home. It is currently planned for launch as early as November 2024. But there is a chance it will get pushed back to 2025, depending on whether all the necessary gear, such as spacesuits and oxygen equipment, is ready.

3. VIPER to search for water on the moon

VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a robot the size of a golf cart that NASA will use to explore the moon’s south pole in late 2024.

Originally scheduled for launch in 2023, NASA pushed the mission back to complete more tests on the lander system, which Astrobotic, a private company, developed as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme.

This robotic mission is designed to search for volatiles, which are molecules that easily vaporize, like water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures. These materials could provide resources for future human exploration on the moon.

The VIPER robot will rely on batteries, heat pipes and radiators throughout its 100-day mission, as it navigates everything from the extreme heat of lunar daylight – when temperatures can reach 224 degrees Fahrenheit (107 degrees Celsius) – to the moon’s frigid shadowed regions that can reach a mind-boggling -240 C.

VIPER’s launch and delivery to the lunar surface is scheduled for November 2024.

4. Lunar Trailblazer and PRIME-1 missions

NASA has recently invested in a class of small, low-cost planetary missions called SIMPLEx, which stands for Small, Innovative Missions for PLanetary Exploration. These missions save costs by tagging along on other launches as what is called a rideshare, or secondary payload.

One example is the Lunar Trailblazer. Like VIPER, Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the moon.

But while VIPER will land on the moon’s surface, studying a specific area near the south pole in detail, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the moon, measuring the temperature of the surface and mapping out the locations of water molecules across the globe.

Currently, Lunar Trailblazer is on track to be ready by early 2024.

However, because it is a secondary payload, Lunar Trailblazer’s launch timing depends on the primary payload’s launch readiness. The PRIME-1 mission, scheduled for a mid-2024 launch, is Lunar Trailblazer’s ride.

PRIME-1 will drill into the moon – it’s a test run for the kind of drill that VIPER will use. But its launch date will likely depend on whether earlier launches go on time.

An earlier Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission with the same landing partner was pushed back to February 2024 at the earliest, and further delays could push back PRIME-1 and Lunar Trailblazer.

5. JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration mission

The JAXA MMX mission concept to study Phobos and Deimos, Mars’ moons.

While the earth’s moon has many visitors – big and small, robotic and crewed – planned for 2024, Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos will soon be getting a visitor as well. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, has a robotic mission in development called the Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX, planned for launch around September 2024.

The mission’s main science objective is to determine the origin of Mars’ moons. Scientists aren’t sure whether Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that Mars captured into orbit with its gravity or if they formed out of debris that was already in orbit around Mars.

The spacecraft will spend three years around Mars conducting science operations to observe Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also land on Phobos’ surface and collect a sample before returning to Earth.

6. ESA’s Hera mission

Hera is a mission by the European Space Agency to return to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system that NASA’s DART mission visited in 2022.

But DART didn’t just visit these asteroids, it collided with one of them to test a planetary defence technique called “kinetic impact.” DART hit Dimorphos with such force that it actually changed its orbit.

The kinetic impact technique smashes something into an object in order to alter its path. This could prove useful if humanity ever finds a potentially hazardous object on a collision course with Earth and needs to redirect it.

Hera will launch in October 2024, making its way in late 2026 to Didymos and Dimorphos, where it will study the physical properties of the asteroids.

NASA Captures Stunning Images of Jupiter’s Moon Io on Closest Flyby in 20 Years

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The Juno spacecraft’s instruments will help scientists better understand volcanic activity on the volatile moon’s surface

red-looking moon with volcanoes appearing as raised dots, the left half in shadow
A view of Jupiter’s moon Io captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on December 30, 2023. NASA / SWRI / MSSS / Jason Perry under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DEED

On Saturday, NASA’s Juno spacecraft traveled closer to Jupiter’s moon Io than any spacecraft has in more than 20 years. At its closest, Juno was expected to be around 930 miles from the moon’s surface, NASA said in a statement prior to the flyby.

The spacecraft’s JunoCam instrument, which takes color images in visible light, captured six pictures of Io, the most volcanically active planetary body in our solar system. Juno’s scientific instruments are expected to have gathered a large amount of additional data on the moon during the flyby.

“By combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno science team is studying how Io’s volcanoes vary,” Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, says in the statement. “We are looking for how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”

NASA’s Juno spacecraft launched from Earth on August 5, 2011, with a mission to study Jupiter. It entered orbit around the gas giant on July 4, 2016. Since then, it has studied the king of planets and its moons, collecting data on Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior. Juno has flown closely by the Jovian moons Ganymede and Europa, and it previously took the first images of Io’s north and south poles.

Beyond the JunoCam, two other cameras aboard the spacecraft imaged Io on the recent flyby: a navigational star camera that can take high-resolution images of the moon’s surface and an infrared camera for detecting heat from volcanoes. Juno is also equipped with a handful of other scientific instruments, including an energetic particle detector, an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph and a microwave radiometer.

On Dec. 30, our #JunoMission made its closest-ever approach to Jupiter’s moon Io, soaring about 930 miles (1,500 km) above the solar system’s most volcanic world.

Juno captured Io’s molten surface and will return for another look in February: https://t.co/UnZpyaFMsC pic.twitter.com/NO4iGndmZ0— NASA (@NASA) January 2, 2024

The images spotlight the volatile world of Io, which is about one-fourth as wide as Earth. The moon is covered with hundreds of volcanoes, some of which spew lava dozens of miles into the sky. Its surface features lakes of molten lava, and its volcanoes can sometimes be seen from telescopes on Earth. Jupiter’s powerful gravity—as well as that of the large moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto—contributes to the formation of the volcanoes, per Space.com’s Robert Lea.

The recent flyby came during Juno’s 57th orbit around Jupiter. When Juno first reached the gas giant, it took the spacecraft 53 days to complete an orbit. The recent flyby of Io reduced its orbit from 38 days to 35 days.

The JunoCam instrument aboard our #JunoMission acquired six images of Jupiter’s moon Io during its close encounter today. This black-and-white view was taken at an altitude of about 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers). More images will be available soon at https://t.co/mGfITRe57Y pic.twitter.com/9GcamrhxPt— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) December 31, 2023

Juno is expected to once again perform a close flyby of Io from around 930 miles away on February 3. This upcoming flyby and the one from last weekend are the closest approaches to the moon since NASA’s Galileo spacecraft reached 112 miles from Io’s surface in 2001, reports NPR’s Joe Hernandez.

“With our pair of close flybys in December and February, Juno will investigate the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, whether a magma ocean exists underneath its crust, and the importance of tidal forces from Jupiter, which are relentlessly squeezing this tortured moon,” Bolton says in NASA’s statement.

After the February 3 flyby, the spacecraft will only approach Io every other trip around Jupiter and will progressively travel farther and farther from the volcanic moon.

Juno will start studying the composition of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere in April. Then, in September 2025, the spacecraft’s life will come to an end. In the future, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, set to launch in October this year, will study Jupiter’s moon Europa and its vast, subsurface ocean.

Water geysers erupt on Europa! Could Jupiter’s icy moon host life?

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Jupiter’s icy moon Europa squirts water like a squishy bath toy when it’s squeezed by the gas giant’s gravity, scientists say. Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, they caught two 124-mile-tall geysers of water vapor spewing out over seven hours from near its south pole.

Water on Jupiter's moon Europa

The discovery, described in the journal Science and at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, shows that Europa is still geophysically active – and that this world in our own solar system could hold an environment friendly to life.

“It’s exciting,” said Lorenz Roth, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and one of the study’s lead authors. “The results are actually more convincing than I would have thought before.”

Europa isn’t the only squirty moon in our planetary system: Saturn’s moon Enceladus has also been caught shooting water out of its south pole in so-called tiger stripes. These pretty plumes are caused by tidal forces. Just as our moon’s gravity squeezes and stretches the Earth a bit, causing the oceans to rise and fall, Saturn’s massive gravitational pull squeezes and stretches its tiny moon, causing cracks on its icy surface to open and allowing water to shoot out.

Scientists have long wondered whether something similar was happening on Jupiter’s moon Europa. After all, its surface is about 65 million years old, which is extremely young by our solar system’s standards, little more than 1.5% of the solar system’s age. This should mean that some geophysical processes must be constantly renewing the surface.

But over several decades, researchers repeatedly failed to catch the moon in action, said Robert Pappalardo, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory planetary scientist who was not involved in the study.

When the Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, flew by Europa, it caught a tiny blip on the moon’s edge that people thought might be a plume, but it could not be confirmed. Then the 1989 Galileo spacecraft saw a potential plume of its own. But this turned out to be digital residue, traces of a previous image, Pappalardo said.

Even Hubble probably wasn’t able to properly see such plumes until space shuttle astronauts on the very last servicing mission for the iconic space telescope in 2009 fixed one of its cameras. Even now, looking for water vapor in the ultraviolet wavelengths of light tests the limits of Hubble’s abilities, scientists said.

To catch Europa in the act, the researchers also knew they had to time their observations right. Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, shoots water near the farthest point in its orbit from Saturn, when the tidal forces cause cracks at the moon’s south pole to open. Around Jupiter, Europa was probably doing the same thing.

Sure enough, when the scientists looked at Europa when it was close to Jupiter in its orbit, they saw nothing. But in December 2012, when the ice moon was at its farthest point from the gas giant, they caught a pair of plumes bearing clear signs of oxygen and hydrogen – the components of water vapor – shooting from near the southern pole.

Scientists can’t say exactly where the plumes are coming from. It could be that they’re going directly from solid ice to gas, as Europa’s ice sheets rub against each other. But it could also be that the these plumes of vapor may be coming from the ocean of liquid water thought to lie under the moon’s frozen surface.

If the moon is still geophysically active, that could make it a prime environment for life.

Another study out of this week’s American Geophysical Union meeting found signs of clays on Europa’s surface. Clays are often associated with organic matter, which is why NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is headed to Mt. Sharp, whose clay-rich layers could hold signs of life-friendly environments.

Those clays were probably brought to Europa by comets or asteroids, and if such material was able to make it into Europa’s subsurface ocean, it could provide the nutrient-rich soup that could allow life to emerge.

“We’re trying to understand, could this be a habitable environment today? Could there be life there today?” Pappalardo said. “At Europa, it seems the processes that could permit habitability may be going on now.”

Perhaps future studies can analyze all the contents of that watery plume and see if there are any signs of organic matter, Pappalardo said. Perhaps a future mission to Europa could fly through the plume and directly sample its contents.

For now, it’s important to replicate the results, he added.

“I will sleep better knowing that there are follow-up observations that confirm it,” Pappalardo said.

Dinosaur impact ‘sent life to Mars’

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Artist's impression of Chicxulub impact
The Chicxulub impact sparked a mass extinction – but did it send life hurtling into space?

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may have catapulted life to Mars and the moons of Jupiter, US researchers say.

They calculated how many Earth rocks big enough to shelter life were ejected by asteroids in the last 3.5bn years.

The Chicxulub impact was strong enough to fire chunks of debris all the way to Europa, they write in Astrobiology.

Thousands of potentially life-bearing rocks also made it to Mars, which may once have been habitable, they add.

“We find that rock capable of carrying life has likely transferred from both Earth and Mars to all of the terrestrial planets in the solar system and Jupiter,” says lead author Rachel Worth, of Penn State University.

A Hitchhikers GuideEarth rocks big enough* to support life made it to:

  • Venus 26,000,000 rocks
  • Mercury 730,000
  • Mars 360,000
  • Jupiter 83,000
  • Saturn 14,000
  • Io 10
  • Europa 6
  • Titan 4
  • Callisto 1

*3m diameter or larger.

Source: Worth et al, Astrobiology

“Any missions to search for life on Titan or the moons of Jupiter will have to consider whether biological material is of independent origin, or another branch in Earth’s family tree.”

Panspermia – the idea that organisms can “hitchhike” around the solar system on comets and debris from meteor strikes – has long fascinated astronomers.

But thanks to advances in computing, they are now able to simulate these journeys – and follow potential stowaways as they hitch around the Solar System.

In this new study, researchers first estimated the number of rocks bigger than 3m ejected from Earth by major impacts.

Europa
Could life be swimming in the oceans of Europa?

Three metres is the minimum they think necessary to shield microbes from the Sun’s radiation over a journey lasting up to 10 million years.

They then mapped the likely fate of these voyagers. Many simply hung around in Earth orbit, or were slowly drawn back down.

Others were pulled into the Sun, or sling-shotted out of the Solar System entirely.

Yet a small but significant number made it all the way to alien worlds which might welcome life. “Enough that it matters,” Ms Worth told BBC News.

About six rocks even made it as far as Europa, a satellite of Jupiter with a liquid ocean covered in an icy crust.

“Even using conservative, realistic estimates… it’s still possible that organisms could be swimming around out there in the oceans of Europa,” she said.

Travel to Mars was much more common. About 360,000 large rocks took a ride to the Red Planet, courtesy of historical asteroid impacts.

“Start Quote

I’d be surprised if life hasn’t gotten to Mars. It seems reasonable that at some point some Earth organisms made it”

Rachel Worth Penn State University

Big bang theory

Perhaps the most famous of these impacts was at Chicxulub in Mexico about 66 million years ago – when an object the size of a small city collided with Earth.

The impact has been blamed for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, triggering volcanic eruptions and wildfires which choked the planet with smoke and dust.

It also launched about 70 billion kg of rock into space – 20,000kg of which could have reached Europa. And the chances that a rock big enough to harbour life arrived are “better than 50/50”, researchers estimate.

But could living organisms actually survive these epic trips?

“I’d be surprised if life hasn’t gotten to Mars,” Ms Worth told BBC News.

“It’s beyond the scope of our study. But it seems reasonable that at some point some Earth organisms have made it over there.”

Early Mars - artist's impression
Early Mars is thought to have been a muddy, watery world

It has been shown that tiny creatures can withstand the harsh environment of space. And bacterial spores can be revived after hundreds of millions of years in a dormant state.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I sometimes joke we might find ammonite shells on the Moon from the Chicxulub impact”

Prof Jay Melosh Purdue University

But even if a hardy microbe did stow away for all those millennia, it might simply burn up on arrival, or land in inhospitable terrain.

The most habitable places in range of Earth are Europa, Mars and Titan – but while all three have likely held water, it may not have been on offer to visitors.

Europa’s oceans are capped by a crust of ice that may be impenetrably thick.

“But it appears regions of the ice sheet sometimes break into large chunks separated by liquid water, which later refreezes,” Ms Worth said.

“Any meteorites lying on top of the ice sheet in a region when this occurs would stand a chance of falling through.

“Additionally, the moons are thought to have been significantly warmer in the not-too-distant past.”

Moon fossils

On Mars, there is little evidence of flowing water during the last 3.5bn years – the likeliest window for Earth life to arrive.

Bacillus subtilis endospores
The first space travellers? Bacterial endospores can survive for millions of years

But what if the reverse trip took place?

The early Martian atmosphere appears to have been warm and wet – prime conditions for the development of life.

And if Martian microbes ever did exist, transfer to Earth is “highly probable” due to the heavy traffic of meteorites between our planets, Ms Worth told BBC News.

“Billions have fallen on Earth from Mars since the dawn of our planetary system. It is even possible that life on Earth originated on Mars.”

While her team are not the first to calculate that panspermia is possible, their 10-million-year simulation is the most extended yet, said astrobiologist Prof Jay Melosh, of Purdue University.

“The study strongly reinforces the conclusion that, once large impacts eject material from the surface of a planet such as the Earth or Mars, the ejected debris easily finds its way from one planet to another,” he told BBC News.

“The Chicxulub impact itself might not have been a good candidate because it occurred in the ocean (50 to 500m deep water) and, while it might have ejected a few sea-surface creatures, like ammonites, into space, it would not likely have ejected solid rocks.

“I sometimes joke that we might find ammonite shells on the Moon from that event.

“But other large impacts on the Earth may indeed have ejected rocks into interplanetary space.”

Another independent expert on panspermia, Mauricio Reyes-Ruiz of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the new findings were “very significant”.

“The fact such different pathways exist for the interchange of material between Earth and bodies in the Solar System suggests that if life is ever found, it may very well turn out to be our very, very distant relatives,” he said.