Author Topic: Proposed Europa Missions  (Read 641068 times)

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1780 on: 12/03/2018 01:26 pm »
Eric Berger’s take on impact of mid-terms on Europa missions:

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A congressman’s loss clouds the future of two demanding missions to Europa
During a recent update, Clipper planners revealed they are looking at Falcon Heavy.

by Eric Berger - Dec 3, 2018 1:00pm GMT

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/will-the-europa-missions-be-iced-after-congressmans-defeat-not-right-now/

Offline leovinus

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1781 on: 12/03/2018 04:48 pm »
Eric Berger’s take on impact of mid-terms on Europa missions:

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A congressman’s loss clouds the future of two demanding missions to Europa
During a recent update, Clipper planners revealed they are looking at Falcon Heavy.

by Eric Berger - Dec 3, 2018 1:00pm GMT

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/will-the-europa-missions-be-iced-after-congressmans-defeat-not-right-now/

Which includes some interesting quotes and discussion on Falcon Heavy as alternative to SLS, as hinted at earlier in this thread

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The breakthrough referenced by Goldstein involved the addition of a Star 48 "kick stage" to the Falcon Heavy rocket, which would provide an extra boost of energy after the rocket's upper stage had fired. With this solid rocket motor kick stage, Goldstein said Clipper would need just a single Earth gravity assist and would not have to go into the inner Solar System for a Venus flyby.

"Nobody is saying we're not going on the SLS," Goldstein said. "But if by chance we don't, we don't have the challenge of the inner Solar System. This was a major development. This was a big deal for us."

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1782 on: 12/03/2018 05:38 pm »
I quibble with a couple of statements in the article. One is stating that Mike Griffin canceled a mission to Europa. I believe that the author is referring to Griffin's cancellation of the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission. This was really a no-brainer: the cost estimates on that mission were over $20 billion (yes, you read that right), and nobody expected it to ever progress very far in development. He did everybody a favor before even more money was thrown down that bottomless pit. One could argue that JIMO actually got in the way of NASA developing a realistic Europa mission for many years.

The article also misses some things about opposition to the lander mission and refers to "some influential voices..." in favor of an Enceladus lander, but that's misleading. I don't think Porco is all that influential, and it is not really a case of dueling landers, it's more a case of the Europa lander vs. the rest of the scientific community, which would rather see that money spent on a bunch of other priorities. For instance, an ice giants mission. The author also neglected to mention the recent planetary science decadal survey midterm report, which had a few things to say about Europa lander as well.

These are minor issues, but I think there's a bigger one that he missed, which is that the Europa lander's scientific support is mostly at JPL and not among the rest of the planetary science community. It's not not all that surprising that the people who would most benefit from two missions with a total price tag of over $5 billion (at least) are the loudest supporters.


Offline vjkane

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1783 on: 12/03/2018 06:51 pm »
1) One could argue that JIMO actually got in the way of NASA developing a realistic Europa mission for many years.

2) and it is not really a case of dueling landers, it's more a case of the Europa lander vs. the rest of the scientific community, which would rather see that money spent on a bunch of other priorities.
1) I would argue that the real purpose of JIMO was to delay or cancel any consideration of a real mission.  It was a complete fantasy from the start.

2) In addition to the question of scientific balance, there's a question of whether or not we know enough about Europa to design a mission that will cost at least $2.5B (I doubt that includes the SLS launch, either).  Where should we land, what are the conditions, what are the right instruments to carry?  Remember that Galileo returned only a trickle of information.  The current lander proposal is a credit to JPL's engineers, but it makes a lot of assumptions that may prove wrong.

Offline JH

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1784 on: 12/03/2018 06:52 pm »
This was really a no-brainer: the cost estimates on that mission were over $20 billion (yes, you read that right), and nobody expected it to ever progress very far in development. He did everybody a favor before even more money was thrown down that bottomless pit.

I always suspected that you were a traitor to the Galactic Empire, Blackstar.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1785 on: 12/03/2018 06:55 pm »
1) One could argue that JIMO actually got in the way of NASA developing a realistic Europa mission for many years.

2) and it is not really a case of dueling landers, it's more a case of the Europa lander vs. the rest of the scientific community, which would rather see that money spent on a bunch of other priorities.
1) I would argue that the real purpose of JIMO was to delay or cancel any consideration of a real mission.  It was a complete fantasy from the start.


Well, one man's fantasy is another man's reality. JIMO has long deserved a good history article explaining its origins and its evolution. Sean O'Keefe is the one who pushed it, and he apparently did so while totally misunderstanding the physics. He kept referring to JIMO as a high speed mission to the outer planets, confusing it with nuclear thermal propulsion. Still, NASA spent over $400 million on that mission that was never going anywhere. There are in fact many parallels between JIMO and Europa lander, foremost being an example of what happens when somebody who controls the money gets captured by one of NASA's field centers (in both cases JPL). The field center is more interested that the money be spent there than they are in the project's actual goals and milestones.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1786 on: 12/03/2018 06:56 pm »
This was really a no-brainer: the cost estimates on that mission were over $20 billion (yes, you read that right), and nobody expected it to ever progress very far in development. He did everybody a favor before even more money was thrown down that bottomless pit.

I always suspected that you were a traitor to the Galactic Empire, Blackstar.

Did I ever hide that?

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1787 on: 12/03/2018 07:03 pm »
2) In addition to the question of scientific balance, there's a question of whether or not we know enough about Europa to design a mission that will cost at least $2.5B (I doubt that includes the SLS launch, either).  Where should we land, what are the conditions, what are the right instruments to carry?  Remember that Galileo returned only a trickle of information.  The current lander proposal is a credit to JPL's engineers, but it makes a lot of assumptions that may prove wrong.

Yeah, I didn't want to get into that because it gets big and complicated fast--and also hard to understand. I think that at the most basic level you have to break the issue down into two parts: the topography information about Europa necessary both to design and land a spacecraft, and the scientific information about Europa necessary to design a good lander. One of the worst things you could do is lock in the design of the Europa lander early and then learn from Europa Clipper's data that the lander won't be able to land, or can only land in boring locations, or cannot perform really useful science. You don't want to spend billions of dollars on a lander that produces lousy data (or that crashes).

There have also been people who have argued (most recently at OPAG) that NASA's effort at driving down the cost of the Europa lander may be the wrong thing to do because you end up with a minimally capable spacecraft. Instead, they argue that the proper thing to do is to have the scientific community hash out the requirements (possibly including waiting for data from Europa Clipper over a decade from now) and then design a larger and more capable lander.

There is a very good argument to be made to do all of these things in steps, with pauses to collect and analyze the data before taking the next step. The typical complaint is that nobody really wants to wait 20-30 years to land on Europa. But is the goal to do it now so that we can see it, or do it right?

Offline vjkane

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1788 on: 12/03/2018 07:09 pm »
There is a very good argument to be made to do all of these things in steps, with pauses to collect and analyze the data before taking the next step. The typical complaint is that nobody really wants to wait 20-30 years to land on Europa. But is the goal to do it now so that we can see it, or do it right?
Europa landers will suffer from the same problem as Venus landers -- it's a damn hostile environment and any lander is going to be bloody expensive and short lived.  (While landers can survive days or even weeks at Europa, unlike Venus with present technology, Europa sits deep in a gigantic gravity well and lacks an atmosphere to provide braking.)  Imagine the pain of your Europa lander sitting down and the camera shows that the spot you really, really want to sample is 20 m away.  To avoid that, you need to find locations that have that condition across a landing eclipse, and then you want to make sure you design the lander for the conditions in that area.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1789 on: 12/03/2018 07:13 pm »
Europa landers will suffer from the same problem as Venus landers -- it's a damn hostile environment and any lander is going to be bloody expensive and short lived.  (While landers can survive days or even weeks at Europa, unlike Venus with present technology, Europa sits deep in a gigantic gravity well and lacks an atmosphere to provide braking.)  Imagine the pain of your Europa lander sitting down and the camera shows that the spot you really, really want to sample is 20 m away.  To avoid that, you need to find locations that have that condition across a landing eclipse, and then you want to make sure you design the lander for the conditions in that area.

The comparison to Venus is a good one, but in some ways it is even more exaggerated for a Europa lander: very limited time on the surface (so you have to do a whole buncha things fast), but also a very high price tag. Nobody wants to spend $3+ billion for a mission that doesn't get the best data, or that just misses getting the best data. You're only going to get one shot to do this mission in many decades, so you better do it right the first time.

Offline Tulse

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1790 on: 12/03/2018 07:19 pm »
What are the arguments for Europa rather than Enceladus?  The latter has a far more benign radiation environment, and is actively pumping out water (and thus perhaps other things).  It would seem a far simpler mission, with far more likelihood of successfully sampling the interior.  Is it just the size of its ocean that makes it less likely to harbour life?

Offline clongton

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1791 on: 12/03/2018 10:05 pm »
What are the arguments for Europa rather than Enceladus? 

Because the message from 2001 A Space Odyssey was that we are not allowed to go to Europa. That, of course, is why we have to go there. Did you learn nothing as a child? When mother told you not to do something, it was because she was hiding something from you and therefore that's exactly what you did. 
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline Star One

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1792 on: 12/11/2018 03:21 pm »
What are the arguments for Europa rather than Enceladus? 

Because the message from 2001 A Space Odyssey was that we are not allowed to go to Europa. That, of course, is why we have to go there. Did you learn nothing as a child? When mother told you not to do something, it was because she was hiding something from you and therefore that's exactly what you did.

Also it looks like Enceladus will hopefully be covered by the Breakthrough Initiatives with NASA help.

https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-support-initial-studies-of-privately-funded-enceladus-mission/


Offline launchwatcher

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1793 on: 12/11/2018 07:08 pm »
Because the message from 2001 A Space Odyssey 2010: Odyssey Two was that we are not allowed to go to Europa. That, of course, is why we have to go there. Did you learn nothing as a child? When mother told you not to do something, it was because she was hiding something from you and therefore that's exactly what you did.
(note correction above).

We're free to go until the monoliths ignite Jupiter.

Offline Star One

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Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1794 on: 12/17/2018 08:49 pm »
NASA's Nuclear-Powered Tunneling Bot Could Hunt for Life on Europa

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Now, researchers at with NASA’s Glenn Research COMPASS team have devised an idea for a probe that could access that ocean: a nuclear-powered tunneling bot that could burrow through the moon’s icy shell to probe its composition and, potentially, access the watery darkness under it.

The researchers dreamed up two versions of the “tunnelbot,” one of which would use a small nuclear reactor and the other of which would use a “radioactive heat source module.” In both cases, the tunnelbot would use excess heat from its reactors to melt the ice as it traveled down.

As it went, the tunnelbot would analyze the ice and search it for signs of current or extinct life, reporting back to Earth with a fiber optic cable connected to communication equipment at Europa’s surface. It would even be equipped to explore lakes buried in the ice before it reached Europa’s oceanic depths.
« Last Edit: 12/17/2018 08:49 pm by Star One »

Offline Star One

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1795 on: 01/16/2019 08:22 pm »
Sounds like it is possible that if you’re visiting Europa just hoping to find life then you are wasting your time.

Ocean Moons, Promising Targets in Search for Alien Life, Could Be Dead Inside

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The interiors of Europa and other watery moons in the outer solar system might be too geologically inactive to support life

Offline redliox

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1796 on: 01/16/2019 09:43 pm »
Sounds like it is possible that if you’re visiting Europa just hoping to find life then you are wasting your time.

Ocean Moons, Promising Targets in Search for Alien Life, Could Be Dead Inside

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The interiors of Europa and other watery moons in the outer solar system might be too geologically inactive to support life

It does bring out a legitimate point about how not all ocean planets might be capable of harboring life.  Tidal heating setups like Europa or Enceladus might be too short lived or the chemistry not quite right.  Among exoplanets there are numerous arguments that different minerals can cause tectonics to stop even with sufficient heat and water, so I would expect similar limitations to exist for wet planets.  Not every puddle has a fish in it here on Earth to put it one way.

As far the odds of Europa having life, I'd give it a 50/50 chance; much higher than modern Mars and maybe slightly higher than Enceladus.  However we won't know for a very long time at best.  For the moment all we can do is verify if and how extensive the oceans are on Europa, perhaps adding better numbers to calculate the chemistry.

I treat the question of if Europa has life the same way regarding of Proxima or Epsilon Eridani having life: we don't know.
"Let the trails lead where they may, I will follow."
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Offline Fequalsma

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1797 on: 01/16/2019 11:19 pm »
More likely Griffin was afraid those moneys would come out of his preciousss Constellation.
F=ma

This was really a no-brainer: the cost estimates on that mission were over $20 billion (yes, you read that right), and nobody expected it to ever progress very far in development. He did everybody a favor before even more money was thrown down that bottomless pit.

I always suspected that you were a traitor to the Galactic Empire, Blackstar.
« Last Edit: 01/16/2019 11:20 pm by Fequalsma »

Offline redliox

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1798 on: 01/30/2019 03:14 am »
Is the Europa Clipper coming up on Critical Design Review at last?  Space.com posted a story alluding to it.  With the government shutdown I had presumed most programs were on momentary pause.
"Let the trails lead where they may, I will follow."
-Tigatron

Offline Star One

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Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #1799 on: 01/30/2019 06:44 am »
Scientists Prepare for Mission to Europa

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Europa Clipper will launch as soon as 2023, then trek out to the Jupiter system for about 40 close passes over the mysterious icy moon. Once it arrives, the spacecraft will gather vital information about the moon’s geology, composition and hidden interior ocean. But before the team can get to work building the spacecraft, it has one final review to pass.

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But there are new challenges to tackle as well, like selecting a path for the spacecraft to follow around the Jupiter system, in a process called trajectory planning, which Senske jokingly refers to as “black magic.” (The spacecraft won’t orbit Europa directly, because it would receive too much radiation if it did. But that restriction offers benefits as well—like catching a peek at other moons. “Io happens to be right there,” Richey said. “Who doesn’t want to look at the planetary body that looks like a pox-ridden abyss?”)

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While they’re waiting on a decision, the team is focused on the current hurdle: addressing questions raised on reviews of individual components of the project and how they interact. Once those are addressed, the project will enter what mission designers call phase C, which includes setting the final budget for the project and beginning to build the real spacecraft. “That’s when the fun starts,” Richey said.

 

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