Robot Submarine on Jupiter Moon Europa is 'Holy Grail' Mission for Planetary Science

www.space.com...

Sending a submarine to the bottom of the ocean on Jupiter's icy moon Europa is the most exciting potential mission in planetary science, according to one prominent researcher. Europa's seafloor may well be capable of supporting life as we know it today, said Cornell University's Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, which is currently roaming the Red Planet. So a Europa robotic submarine mission is at the top of his wish list, though it likely won't happen anytime soon.

A Europa submarine mission didn't make the Decadal Survey's list; it's just not feasible at the moment. If scientists want to tackle it, they'll have to overcome some serious technical and engineering challenges — such as how to get through Europa's icy crust.

If it's not feasible let's start to tackle it now then and maybe the timeline for a mission could be moved up instead of pushing it to the back of the list, those challenges will help us evolve as a species when it comes to space exploration.

I'd love to see my money spent on this instead of bombing other countries. This could change the way we think about everything if we made it there and find some type of life even if microbial. This should be bumped up on the list of priorities, the things we'd have to overcome to make it there and complete the mission would help us advance our technology past what were capable of doing at the moment. It could lead to the creation of all kinds of cutting edge space equipment so why not focus on it?

reply to post by Brandon88


it would be awesome to go there but they are having enough trouble getting through the ice at Lake Vostok so it'll probably be awhile.

How long ago did we make those solar powered mars rovers? With whatever advancements in tech we' ve done since then it would be cool to have a bunch of those on the moon and more planets.. Have a yearly challenge to build a rover in colleges and then the top 5 winners actually get to go... Then the next year do it again, then in a few years.... Battle bots in space...

Aren't there plans to have the moon surveyed by 2 aircraft/spacecraft? Did that already happen? Let's have more of that kind of thing.... Xprize type stuff, get the kids back into science...