Evidence for liquid water just under Europa's surface

Right considering that recently whilst digging deep into the Antarctica ice sheets we have found a new species of sea creature similar to a jelly fish and now again with an complete OXYGEN free animal similar again to a jellyfish found albeit not under deep ice this time but the fact it is alive without oxygen

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8609246.stm

We should be trying to get to Europa to drill down the ice sheet and explore its vast liquid ocean of water.
But although Mars is beautiful etc. Imagine if people made a beagle machine sent to Europa it landed drilled down and then explored..and found life!!!

What do others say. It seems that there is vast quantites of liquid water under the ice of Europa and where there is water there is life generally now believed.
Or is it that most governments don't seem to think we are not ready for the concept of life elsewhere yet or simply religious groups exercising their lobby potential ?
Am I the only one to wonder why there isn't a global effort to get to Europa over Mars ?
Isn't such discoveries only to highten why we should head to CONFIRMED vast oceans of water and take a look?

 

This is our best bet at the moment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Jupiter_System_Mission
Launch in 2020

 

To Paraphrase Arthur C Clarke's book/film 2010, will said probes discover a large Monolith there, & if this the case, will the Roscosmos lander be leaving Europa somewhat faster than it arrived ...?
(Sorry, but I could'nt resist making the reference...)

 

I wank myself purple over what we might find on Europa. Sod the ISS, this is where the money should be going.

Knocks the 'Goldilocks' hypothesis into a cocked hat too.

The pretty display by Enceladus a couple of years back suggests that Europa isn't the only place worth looking at either.

 

I'd love to see a europa mission I don't think it quite disproves the goldilocks band idea though. We might find cool alien flora and fauna but I'd be suprised to see anything more intelligent than some sort of fish-analogue living under the ice

 

I'd like to see us send a dirigible-type probe to Titan. The big problem with Europa is that the ice is supposed to be many (perhaps 100) km deep. How do you communicate with a probe through that depth of ice? Even the lightest cable that long is going to weigh a tonne or three. And when it breaks through the ice, better hope the cable doesn't snag on anything and break...

But Titan... the only other place in the solar system with free-standing bodies of fluid (albeit not water). Could liquid ethane be a catalyst for life like water? Is there enough light for life there? Again, the big difficulty is getting the probe there with sufficient power to operate. It's probably going to need a full nuclear reactor rather than a RTG.

 

Isn't there a big ethnical question about drilling and probing Europa tho? I remember seeing a docco on a Russian science expedition to some subterranean lake that has seen light for millions of years, and they were going to drill&probe, but there were lots of problems with possible contamination. Surely the same applies to Europa, and what possibly issues are there with potentially dumping terran microbes into Europa?

Fucking exciting of there is one tho. And Io.

 

Life on IO? Highly unlikely. That place can barely hold a rocky crust together!

 

Yeah, but it'd be interesting for geologists

 

Well, that is one of the best counters to the idea I have heard (I dimly recall that docu as well). What contaminants would we introduce? However I think if the drills were subject to proper high level 'clean room' treatment it would be ok

 

Here we go, Lake Vostock

 

interesting link there Kyser.

 

isn't that monolith supposed to be on phobos? (although Hoaglands "ground breaking 100% solid proof that Phobos is an alien space ship" turned into a picture with a few interesting lines on, with no sign of any monolith)

Anyway, yeah, europa....let's have it

 

ALL THESE MOOONS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA

ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE

(Message from the monolith peoples at the end of 2010)

 

People never take these things seriously.. I mean LOOK, IT'S GOT LINES ON IT

http://www.enterprisemission.com/Phobos2.html

 

Assuming we can loft something so massive, I'm imagining a three-part surface probe for Europa. Three concentric rings. The base station in the form of a ring, a middle ring which will melt its way though the ice unravelling a communications cable behind it, and attached to the inner ring, a probe that will explore the ocean when it breaks through. I think that the difficult bit will be to get the inner ring to stay attached to the underside of the ice. It looks like you can get away with 100 Km of cable for less than a tonne.

We'll also want an orbiter and a mobile surface probe.

 

Damn, you got there first.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15754786

 

And the probes developped to explore the antarctic lakes will be relevant. Mentioned in these old items.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/03/lake_ellsworth_expedition_approved/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/406144.stm

A Spy in Europa.


Sure I heard something more recently on news about the attempt to develop a probe and method to do exploration with out contamination.

 

I was baffled by this thread until I realised it said Europa, not Ethiopia

 

I know those lines on the surface are supposed to be cracks in the ice sheet but i love to think that it is roots or nerves of some kinda moon wide oganism

 

"Just under" is still kilometers, but this is good evidence that the liquid can make it to the surface regularly. Very cool

 

Just reading this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Frozen-Sky-ebook/dp/B0047DX0UI

Set under the ice on Europa.

 

Clarke's Rama books were all about this. The series started off well but went shit and boring.

 

Isn't that because he wrote the first one and Gentry Lee wrote the others?

 

The first one is great, I thought he at least wrote the 2nd.

Just checked, and it appears Lee wrote the rest while Clarke edited. What a swizz. But it explains a few things.